The Rutgers University Board of Governors has approved the promotions of three School of Communication and Information (SC&I) Assistant Professors: Shawnika Hull, Sunyoung Kim, and Caitlin Petre.
Their promotions will become effective on July 1, 2023.
“Please join me in congratulating Shawnika, Sunyoung, and Caitlin on this transformative accomplishment, and we wish them many more years of productive contributions to education, scholarship, and the common good,” said SC&I Interim Dean and Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Dafna Lemish.
Shawnika Hull: Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in Communication
Hull’s research focuses on reducing racial inequities in HIV incidence through community-engaged, applied communication science. She develops, implements, and evaluates theoretically grounded communication interventions focused on impacting individual and social-structural barriers to HIV prevention. This research is informed by and developed in close collaboration with community partners. Her expertise includes qualitative (i.e. focus groups) and quantitative (i.e. surveys, experiments) data collection and analytical methods. Her research has been funded through various institutional, non-profit (i.e., MAC AIDS Fund) and governmental mechanisms (i.e., NIH, CDC) and published in communication and public health journals. Her rigorous, theoretically grounded, collaborative approach to research informs health communication theorizing and practice. Hull is currently a Visiting Professor in the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. Hull holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.
“Please join me in congratulating Shawnika, Sunyoung, and Caitlin on this transformative accomplishment, and we wish them many more years of productive contributions to education, scholarship, and the common good,” said SC&I Interim Dean and Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Dafna Lemish.
Sunyoung Kim: Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in Library and Information Science
Kim is interested in improving the quality of everyday life through the use of technology. Leveraging mobile and computing technologies, she explores novel technical solutions that empower people to better understand the world around them and make informed choices for quality of life. As an HCI researcher, Kim designs, builds, and evaluates ubiquitous computing technologies that can promote positive changes towards health, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. Before joining the Rutgers SC&I faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS). She was a member of Aware Home Research Initiative and the Ubiquitous Computing Research Group at Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, she worked as a user interaction designer and project manager in the field of internet media, user interface for mobile device and Ubiquitous Appliance for Apartment Complex. Kim is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Computer Science. She holds a Ph.D. in Human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University’s Human Computer Interaction Institute.
Caitlin Petre: Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in Journalism and Media Studies
Petre studies the social processes behind the digital datasets and algorithms that increasingly govern the contemporary world. Using qualitative research methods such as ethnographic observation and in-depth interviewing, she maps the complex relationships between digital analytics, the social actors who create them, and the established experts who make use of them. Petre’s book, “All the News That’s Fit to Click” (Princeton University Press, 2021), is a behind-the-scenes look at how performance analytics are transforming the work of journalism. Petre’s scholarly work has been published in Social Media & Society, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociologica, and Digital Journalism. She has been featured or quoted in popular publications such as the New York Times, WIRED, Study Hall, Columbia Journalism Review, and the Atlantic. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University, is currently a faculty affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Discover more about the Rutgers School of Communication and Information (SC&I) on the website.
