As it embarks on its second year as a stand-alone college, DePaul University’s College of Communication has dramatically expanded it faculty this fall to meet growing demand.

The new faculty members include noted educator Teresa Mastin, who served as a Fulbright senior specialist this summer in Rwanda, as well as David Aragona, Dustin Goltz, Kelly Kessler, Sora Kim, Marla Krause, Willona Olison, Erik Peterson, Lou Rutigliano, Meheli Sen and Kasey Windels.

“We have hired 11 amazing people, again and again getting our top choices even while they had attractive competing offers from other top-notch institutions,” said Jacqueline Taylor, dean of the College of Communication.

Below are brief biographies of the new faculty members:

• Teresa Mastin joins DePaul as an associate professor and teaches courses in public relations and health communication. She has taught strategic public relations for more than a dozen years at the undergraduate and graduate level. Over the summer, Mastin taught communication courses at the National University of Rwanda as a Fulbright senior program specialist. Her research expertise includes media advocacy in public relations; media portrayals of health issues related to women, disadvantaged and/or vulnerable populations; media portrayals of minorities; and black media’s effect on public opinion. Mastin has a doctoral degree in mass media from Michigan State University, where she previously served as an associate professor in advertising, public relations and retailing.

• Visiting Instructor David T. Aragona teaches courses on human communication and research methods. His research interests include interpersonal communication, nonverbal cues of deceptive people and the differences in behavior between guilty and innocent suspects in criminal interrogations. He is a doctoral candidate in communication at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.

• Assistant Professor Dustin B. Goltz teaches courses in performance of literature, performance for social change and the rhetoric of popular culture. His areas of expertise include gender and communication, rhetorical methods, queer theory, critical theory and cultural studies. His research on queer popular culture, the performance of personal narrative, the rhetoric of gay male aging and performance methods has been published in journals including Text and Performance Quarterly and Western Journal of Communication. As an artist and performer, Goltz produces solo and collaborative multimedia work. He received a doctoral degree in communication at Arizona State University and a master of fine arts from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

• Visiting Assistant Professor Kelly Kessler teaches undergraduate courses in film history and theory and analysis, and a graduate course in mass media. Her most recent research has focused on the evolution of the Hollywood musical and its impact on masculinity; the mainstreaming of lesbianism on American television; and the interplay of viewer identity construction and network-sponsored television Web sites. Her work has been published in a variety of publications, including Film Quarterly, The New Queer Aesthetic on Television and the Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinity. She received a doctoral degree in radio-television-film with a portfolio in women’s and gender studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

• Assistant Professor Sora Kim teaches courses in public relations and advertising. Her research interests include corporate communication campaigns influence on consumers’ perceptions of companies and products; the relationship between organizations and the public; corporate social responsibility; crisis communication; health communication and gender/intercultural studies in public relations. She has professional experience in advertising and public relations for multinational corporations and has taught courses in public relations principles and advertising research at the University of Tennessee. She received a doctoral degree in public relations from the University of Tennessee.

• Instructor Marla Krause serves as faculty advisor for The DePaulia student newspaper and teaches courses in journalism. She is a veteran journalist who spent 22 years as an editor at the Chicago Tribune and was the first woman to work in that paper’s sports department. Her areas of expertise are journalism, media relations and health reporting. She has a master’s degree in social sciences from the University of Chicago.

• Willona Olison, a visiting assistant professor, teaches courses in organizational communication. Her areas of expertise include organizational communications in religious institutions, top-down decision-making and voice processes within organizations, and alternate organizational forms such as community-based organizations and churches. She has served as an organizational consultant for profit and nonprofit organizations, and oversees an urban leadership development institute that serves homeless and underprivileged youths in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. She earned a doctoral degree in communication studies from Northwestern University.

• Instructor Erik Peterson teaches courses in mass communication, broadcast journalism and gender and communications. His areas of expertise include the effects of mass media on society, media enjoyment, media literacy and information processing, particularly as it deals with television news. His professional experience includes four years as a producer and senior producer at two local news stations in Florida. He is a doctoral candidate in mass communication at Florida State University. 

• Instructor Lou Rutigliano teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on online journalism, including the use of multimedia, blogs and mobile technology to create new forms of journalism. His research interests include the sociology of news, tensions between digital culture and journalism culture, coverage of marginalized communities, and citizen and alternative online media. He is a doctoral candidate in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

• Assistant Professor Meheli Sen teaches courses in media and cinema studies. Her primary research interest is post-independence popular Hindi cinema, commonly referred to as “Bollywood.” She is especially interested in how genre, gender and sexuality resonate with and negotiate specific moments in India’s troubled encounters with modernity and more recently globalization. She received a doctoral degree in film studies at the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, Emory University.   

• Assistant Professor Kasey Windels teaches courses in advertising. Her research interests include organizational creativity, gender and the advertising agency, creative advertising, organizational behavior and consumer psychology. She earned a doctoral degree in advertising at the University of Texas at Austin.

 Established in spring 2007, the College of Communication is DePaul’s ninth college, serving 965 undergraduate students and 131 graduate students in fall 2007. It originated in 1978 as a major area of study in the Department of English and later became a department of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

In its first year, the college has added two new graduate programs and developed five distinct undergraduate majors. DePaul is now the second largest provider of bachelor’s degrees in communication in Illinois and the fourth largest provider of master’s degrees in communication in the state.

The college prepares students to craft and deliver messages across a variety of platforms, including face-to-face, print, audio, video, Web and the rapidly evolving world of social media. It integrates mass communication and communication studies, enabling practitioners to draw on the history and ongoing evolution of communication.

It offers graduate programs in journalism; media, culture and society; organizational and multicultural communication; and public relations and advertising. Undergraduate programs include communication studies; journalism; media and cinema studies; PR/advertising; and communication and media.

Located in the third-largest media market in the United States, the college provides its students with nearly 900 internship opportunities at network, radio and television outlets; public relations and advertising agencies; corporations and nonprofits; independent film companies; local and national political offices, entertainment venues; and sports franchises.