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College adds two faculty members

Huan Chen
Huan Chen
Rita Men
Rita Men

The University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications will add two new faculty members in August to continue strengthening its degrees and programs in Advertising and Public Relations.

Rita Men, APR, a specialist on employee engagement and leadership communication, will join the College as an Assistant Professor of Public Relations, and new media and advertising expert Huan Chen will join the Advertising faculty as an Assistant Professor.

Men is currently an Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University and Chen is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.

Men is currently working as part of a global research team dedicated to developing the measurement standard for excellence in internal communication and on several projects concerning how organizational leadership, culture, new technology, and strategic communication factors interplay to influence public relations effectiveness.

Her research has been published in leading referred journals, including Journal of Public Relations Research, Management Communication Quarterly and the Public Relations Review, and as book chapters in Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation, The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication: A Guide to Internal Communication, Public Relations, Marketing and Leadership, and New Media and Public Relations.

Men serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Public Relations Research, Communication Research Report, and was the 2010 recipient of the Ketchum Excellence in Public Relations Research Award from the Institute for Public Relations.

Men earned a doctorate in Communication in 2012 from the University of Miami, a master’s degree in Communication from Hong Kong Baptist University and a bachelor’s degree in International Communication from Zhejiang University, China.

She has extensive professional experience, including corporate communication, branding, and public relations research. She has worked internationally with Alibaba Group, Inc., Ketchum, Inc., and provided communication consultancy for multiple multinational corporations and non-profit organizations in China and the United States.

Huan’s research interests include new media and advertising, integrated marketing communication, and international and cross-cultural advertising.

Her research has been published in the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Interactive Advertising and the Journal of Promotion and Management. She has also presented nearly 20 research papers at international, national and regional conferences.

Her recent book, “Connecting Virtual World Perception to Real World Consumption: Chinese White-Collar Professionals’ Interpretation of Product Placement in SNSs,” was released in July 2011.

Huan earned her bachelor’s degree in Advertising and a master’s degree in Communication from Wuhan University in Wuhan, China. After serving as an Assistant Professor at Ocean University in China, she relocated to the United States in 2005, graduating with distinction from UF with a master’s degree in Advertising. She then earned a doctorate in Communication and Information in 2011 from the University of Tennessee.

Posted: February 12, 2015
Category: College News
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