The new Center for Latinx Digital Media launches this fall with an aim to promote and research digital media in Latinx and Latin American communities, all while bringing together students, scholars and practitioners across the world.

School of Communication Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Education Madhu Reddy is a co-recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health ALACRITY Center grant. It will fund three major projects with area medical centers to explore digital mental health interventions for young people, pregnant women, and older adults.

E. Patrick Johnson has achieved many firsts in his lifetime. He was a first-generation college student and the first African American from his hometown to receive a doctorate. He was the first African American to be hired and tenured in Northwestern’s Department of Performance Studies, and the first to be given a named professorship in the School of Communication (SoC). Today, he was named the next dean of SoC, the first African American to hold that role. He will take over as dean Aug. 1, succeeding Barbara O’Keefe.

Northwestern School of Communication professor E. Patrick Johnson will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the prestigious honors society that recognizes exemplary contributions to the pursuit of knowledge, discourse, and advancing the common good. He was among 276 inductees in the 2020 class working across a range of disciplines, eight of whom are from Northwestern.

At Thursday’s daily White House briefing on the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump mused that scientists should test the internal use of ultraviolet light or disinfectants like bleach to treat COVID-19 in patients. Sound advice?

“No,” says Bonnie Martin-Harris, the Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and Northwestern University School of Communication’s associate dean for faculty affairs. “Cleaning agents are caustic to the mucosa—the lining of the mouth, the throat, the esophagus, the stomach—and in fact can destroy the tissues so much so that, one, the person could die.”

Two dynamic programs in the School of Communication were ranked last month in the top five in their categories in US News and World Report’s latest evaluation of graduate learning.

The Doctor of Audiology (AuD) program is now occupying the No. 4 slot on the list of top audiology programs, up from No. 7, and the MS in Speech, Language, and Learning program placed at No. 2, up from No. 5, among speech-language pathology programs. Both programs are housed in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Jeffrey Sconce, associate professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film, is a recipient of the prestigious 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the highest honors awarded to scholars in the arts, humanities, and sciences.

“I am thrilled,” Sconce says. “It’s an honor to be included among the many scholars and artists recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation.”

Award-winning costume designer Ana Kuzmanic, associate theater professor in the School of Communication, provides an insight into the creative process of mounting a world premiere opera.

For centuries, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has fueled the imaginations of artists, yielding famous adaptations by composer Claudio Monteverdi, filmmaker Jean Cocteau, playwright Tennessee Williams, choreographer Pina Bausch and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, to name just a few.

David Holstein (C05) and Alan Schmuckler (C05) were frequent and productive collaborators as Northwestern School of Communication students—Holstein majored in radio/television/film and Schmuckler was in the theatre department. But it’s the product of their first professional partnership that is having a homecoming of sorts this weekend.

Their clever, toe-tapping musical adaptation of The Emperor’s New Clothes begins a run at The Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts on February 21 through March 8. This subversive take, which premiered to critical acclaim in 2010 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, was written to appeal to both children and adults alike.