August 18, 2011
UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication Evjue-Bascom Professor Sharon Dunwoody has received the prestigious Paul J. Deutschmann Award in recognition of her research career at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award was conferred in a special session organized for the St. Louis meeting.
The award is named in honor of Paul J. Deutschmann, who developed the College of Communication Arts at Michigan State University. In the 20 times the award has been presented since 1969, Dunwoody is the first woman to win the award.
Professor Dunwoody, a faculty affiliate of the Nelson Instite for Environmental Studies, was recognized for her pioneering work in the field of science communication. She has spent most of her 30-plus-year research career focusing on questions ranging from how science news is constructed to the effects of those messages on knowledge and attitudes. She has made contributions to risk communication as well as to an understanding of the relationships between scientists and journalists.
The author/coauthor of more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and more than 25 book chapters, Dunwoody has authored or edited five books. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the Society for Risk Analysis and of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. She served as president of both MAPOR and AEJMC and is the current chair-elect of the AAAS Section on General Interest in Science and Technology.
Equally importantly, she has mentored scores of students at both the master's and doctoral levels and follows their professional science communication or research trajectories with keen interest and affection.
Watch a brief video of Dunwoody accepting the award.