Baylor Communication

Words cannot even begin to describe how proud we are of these grads!!! Congratulations, Class of 2026!!! 🎓📚🙌

Way to go, Dr. Ge**er! 🙌

Congrats to this year's Outstanding Faculty Award recipients! 👩‍🏫👨‍🏫

These 12 honorees are some of Baylor's best all-around professors -- honored for their teaching, scholarship & academic contributions: https://bit.ly/49sX34u

Twelve Baylor professors have been honored with *Outstanding Faculty Awards* for their exceptional teaching, scholarship and contributions to the academic community for the 2025-2026 academic year — and one of them is our own Dr. Matt Ge**er!

This designation represents a singular honor for Baylor faculty since the recognition comes from their colleagues. Each of the honorees will receive an award of $3,750, a citation, and recognition by their departments.

Dr. Ge**er received the Tenured Teaching Award specifically. Learn more about this honor here: https://news.web.baylor.edu/news/story/2026/baylor-university-honors-outstanding-faculty-2025-26. Congratulations, Dr. Ge**er! We are so proud! 👏

We love our grad students and we were so glad to celebrate them earlier this month during Baylor’s Graduate Student Appreciation Week! Very proud of the students pictured and all the incredible young scholars in our graduate program. 👏

A special thank you to our GPD, Dr. Ashley Barrett, for her leadership and deep investment in our students! 🫶

Join us Wednesday!

Students: Join us Wednesday for a Alumni Panel featuring Blair Brooks of Cromwell Commercial Group, Brett Bufton of Sendero Provisions Co., Jensen (Kinnebrew) Gober of JetSuiteX, and Brady Haag of Baylor University!

Such a great Friday afternoon celebrating our 2025-2026 Outstanding Communication Students — Holly McDonald, Elsah Luan, and Corey Bente!! ✨ Festivities included lunch at Baylor Club with Drs. Browning and Damron, followed by Academic Honors Convocation, where the Outstanding Students from across the university were honored!

We are SO proud of these three students’ hard work, academic excellence, and wonderful representation of the Department of Communication! True rockstars. 👏👏👏

P.S. Congrats to Janie Kull, double major in Communication and Great Texts, who was honored as an Outstanding Student for the Department of Great Texts of the Western Tradition!! 🙌

We LOVED seeing our students represent the Department of Communication at the Baylor Student Research Week’s BEAR Symposium!

🏆 HUGE congratulations to Maddie Leard (mentored by Dr. Arden Roeder), who was awarded *1st Place Podium Presentation* for her project “Communicating Identity in Times of Disruption: Organizational Messages and Employee Outcomes”!

Liz Price (mentored by Dr. Kayla Rhidenour) presented “Filling in the Gaps: How Family Caregivers Adapt Communication Strategies and Co-Construct Narratives with Memory-Impaired TBI Survivors”!

Sydney Flinner (mentored by Dr. Leslie Hahner) presented “Communication in the Workplace Post-COVID-19 and the Effects on Relationships in the Workplace”!

Finally, Communication major Elsah Luan presented research as part of her Chinese minor (mentored by Professor Holly Shi, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures): “Food and Wellness in Traditional Chinese Medicine: The Four Natures and Five Flavors.”

We are so proud of the thoughtful, impactful work our students are doing and the wonderful faculty members who have mentored them along the way! 👏

Students: Join us Wednesday for a Alumni Panel featuring Blair Brooks of Cromwell Commercial Group, Brett Bufton of Sendero Provisions Co., Jensen (Kinnebrew) Gober of JetSuiteX, and Brady Haag of Baylor University!

Updates from the Department of Communication on ! ✨ Friends of Baylor Comm, we hope you’ll consider donating to our Communication Excellence Fund today: https://baylor.scalefunder.com/gday/giving-day/108549/donate?des=722322&dept=108575. Our Chair, Dr. Blair Browning, is generously matching gifts up to $2,500, and all gifts made to our Excellence Fund go directly to helping current Communication majors. Thank you for your generosity and support today — it means the world to us! Sic ‘em, Comm! ✨

Recently, students in Dr. Jessica Ford’s course spent time in the Baylor University Libraries Arts and Special Collections Research Center, engaging with materials that brought course concepts to life in a tangible way! 📰🩻

From historic government documents on disease and prevention, to early 1900s magazine representations of health, to contemporary artworks exploring the relationship between body, mind, and societal expectations — students were able to see how health messaging shifts across time, culture, and context. 😷

We are grateful for Dr. Ford and Baylor Libraries Special Collections!