University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Three of our M.A. students have recently presented their work on crisis and renewal to practitioners and scholars at the state and national level. We are excited by the way these students carry on the department norm of making meaningful contributions through applied communication research.

• Reagen Megee presented her paper, “Arkansas’ Response to Hurricane Katrina: Effective Crisis Communication in Public Health” to to the Arkansas Department of Health. Her research was conducted to determine ways the state could learn from their response and improve future communication practices in health communication.
• Ashley Boccarossa presented her paper, “Arkansas Department of Health Coordinated Response to Hurricane Gustav: A Crisis and Communication Renewal Analysis” also to the Arkansas Department of Health. Her research documents ways this organization is using data from crisis communication to renew and improve their role in responding to natural disasters.
• Fan Ku presented his research to the National Center for Food Protection and Defense. Fan’s presentation title was “King Car’s response to China’s melamine crisis.” His research illustrates a rare case of an organization that was able to ethically and responsibly respond the melamine crisis in China and as a result renew and grow from the crisis. His presentation was done via the web and conference call to risk and crisis practitioners and researchers from Washington D.C., Michigan State University, Cornell University, University of Kentucky, University of Oklahoma, University of Montana, University of Tennessee, among others.