麻豆果冻传媒

A Pulitzer prize-winner, an expert in data governance and technology policy, an innovative data journalist, two award-winning filmmakers and an interrogator of digital identities and narratives will all join the faculty of 麻豆果冻传媒 School of Communication (AU SOC) this fall. Below is a brief introduction to them all 鈥� watch for other opportunities to engage with and learn about them in the coming months.

Chelsea Butkowski, Assistant Professor听

Chelsea Butkowski is a media researcher studying the performance, datafication, and infrastructure of identity online. They examine digital identity through a political lens, which has led to recent projects on voting and vaccine selfies as well as user imaginaries of the Election Day social media feed. Butkowski鈥檚 research has been recognized with support from major funding organizations and awards at national and international conferences. Their work can be found in a number of leading communication journals. Butkowski draws from a background in art history, material culture, and museum studies to situate contemporary digital and visual media within wider historical contexts of communication practice. To address their research questions, they also specialize in media research methods, including content analysis and in-depth interviewing. Currently, Butkowski is developing research on the everyday politics of LGBTQIA+ Reddit communities and building a coalition of qualitative and mixed methods political communication researchers.

Fun fact: Butkowski鈥檚 favorite museum is the Corning Museum of Glass in Upstate NY. For the past few months, she鈥檚 been trying to learn to make her own stained glass art.

Whitney Christopher, Professorial Lecturer听

Whitney Christopher is an award-winning multimedia journalist, researcher, and voiceover artist. Whitney鈥檚 expertise is shooting, writing, editing, reporting, and producing broadcast news stories for local television network affiliates. She also uses this expertise in TV news as the basis for her research and publications exploring hair-based discrimination in the broadcast news industry, particularly for Black women and women of color. Before entering the education field, Whitney was an anchor, reporter, and multimedia journalist for several local news affiliates including ABC, NBC, and CBS. She received an Associated Press award for her multi-platform coverage of a news story and her work has been nominated for several other awards such as regional Emmys and Murrow awards. Whitney previously taught for nearly five years in the Digital Media department at the University of the District of Columbia and served as an adjunct professor at AU. In addition to her work in video broadcasting, Whitney also serves as a professional voiceover artist for a local government contracting company.

Fun Fact: Christopher doesn鈥檛 like chocolate.

Megan Finn, Associate Professor

Megan Finn鈥檚 cutting-edge scholarship focuses on complementary streams in data and computing governance, and post-disaster communication. She has an impressive track record of externally funded research and has engaged in high-profile public scholarship.听Megan听is recognized as a leading innovator in the area of technology policy. Her work has been published by MIT Press, appeared in top communication journals, received accolades and awards at major international conferences, and received funding from some of the foremost scientific and philanthropic grant-making bodies. Much of this externally funded work has involved leading international teams of researchers. She currently leads an NSF-funded collaborative project on research ethics governance projects in computer science that will run until 2026 and is also working on collaborative book projects.听听

Fun Fact:听Finn will be teaching听COMM-704 Media, Technology & Democracy this fall.听

Chung-Wei Huang, Professorial Lecturer听

Chung-Wei Huang is an award-winning film director who grew up in a small town in Taiwan. She is currently based in Baltimore, Md. Her creative work focuses primarily on narrative films and dance for the camera videos. Her thesis film, Midnight Carnival (2018), premiered at the Asian 麻豆果冻传媒 International Film Festival and has been selected by film festivals across the nation. Her second narrative short film, Buck (2021), premiered at the LA shorts international Film Festival. Most recently, she received Rubys Artist Grant to produce a dance for the camera video titled Days without End. She was a semifinalist for the Sondheim Artscape Prize in 2018 and an awardee for the Baker Artist Awards in 2021. Currently, she is working on the post-production of her next short film, Squeegee Boy, which is supported by the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund. Huang received her MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, with the support of the Presidential Fellowship.

Fun Fact: Huang worked in a traveling carnival in California for one summer break while she听was a college student in Taiwan. The experience was later adapted into her听thesis film. 听

Wesley Lowery, Associate Professor and Executive Editor, Investigative Reporting Workshop

Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and best-selling author, widely regarded as one of the nation鈥檚 leading journalists covering issues of law enforcement, race and justice, will be an associate professor of investigative journalis and executive editor at the听, the nonprofit, editorially independent newsroom based in SOC. As a national correspondent for听The Washington Post, in 2015, Lowery pitched and helped lead听, an unprecedented real-time database to track annual fatal shootings by 麻豆果冻传媒 police officers. The database, which remains the most reliable public data on police shootings, won the听听a听听and听听and was named one of the decade鈥檚听听works of journalism. His 2018 project听, with Kimbriell Kelly, Ted Mellnik and Steven Rich, a look into police failure to solve homicides, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Student journalists from IRW and a graduate practicum inside听The Washington Post听contributed to gathering and reporting on the data that underpins each of these major investigations.听

Aarushi Sahejpal, Professorial Lecturer

Aarushi Sahejpal is one of the youngest professors in AU history, transitioning from his former SOC position as adjunct professor to become a professorial lecturer in quantitative methods and data journalism. He will hold a dual appointment as data editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop鈥攁 position he鈥檚 held since last year.听At IRW, he launched and runs a computational journalism lab that builds unprecedented datasets and is also a data reporter on The Accountability Project at The Center for Public Integrity, one of the oldest nonprofit newsrooms in the country. In 2021, Sahejpal helped build the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, which became one of the most-trustworthy sources of COVID-19 data and information in the United States, and was utilized by federal agencies like the CDC, and two presidential administrations. He鈥檚 also an alum of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Biden-Harris administration and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Sahejpal is the faculty advisor for the AU chapter of the Asian 麻豆果冻传媒 Journalists Association, and very passionate about making data science accessible to everyone.

Fun Fact: Sahejpal rides a motorcycle, and the license plate reads 鈥渄ata.鈥�

Jamie Sisley, Assistant Professor听

Jamie听Sisley is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker whose work addresses issues like opioid addiction, immigration rights, and the normalization of queer love. He听recently wrote and directed Stay Awake, a narrative feature film that premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival, where it won the AG Kino Gilde Auteur Award and was Honorable Mention for the Crystal Bear. Starring Chrissy Metz (This Is Us), Wyatt Oleff (Apple鈥檚 City on Fire), and Fin Argus (Max鈥檚 Queer As Folk), Stay Awake is a personal exploration of the roller coaster ride that families go on while trying to help their loved ones battle addiction. Sisley also received an Emmy Nomination for his feature documentary, Farewell Ferris Wheel. The film won the Creative Promise Award from the Tribeca Film Institute, received an Imagen Award Nomination for the positive portrayal of Latinos in entertainment, and was nationally broadcast on PBS and Netflix.听Sisley鈥檚 work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, Tribeca Film Institute, Film Independent, ITVS, and The Smithsonian Institute.

Fun Fact: Before filmmaking, Sisley was an artist manager in the music industry, working with artists such as Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.听