e-mail:emaibach@gmu.edu

An epiphany that stuck on a walk in the mountains in 2006 with Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber – Director of the Postsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research -- forever changed Ed’s life. The epiphany: the realization that climate change is the ultimate threat to the public’s health & wellbeing, worldwide. Ed is a highly experienced public health advocate and social change professional and a leading academic in the field of communication. His work over the past 25 years has helped define the fields of public health communication and social marketing and his book Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and Public Health Practice is widely used by academics and practitioners alike. Having earned a PhD in communication research (Stanford) and a Masters in Public Health, he has had the pleasure of serving as an Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute, as Worldwide Director of Social Marketing for Porter Novelli, as Chairman of the Board for Kidsave International, and as a member of the faculty at several leading universities (Emory, George Washington, and currently George Mason). Ed responded to his epiphany by refocusing his work entirely around climate change prevention and adaptation, and by moving to Mason in 2007 to create the Center.

Carl Botan

 

e-mail: cbotan@gmu.edu

Carl has over three decades of practice and academic research experience in the fields strategic communication and political campaigns.  His current focus is on the use of strategic communication campaigns to address terrorism and other homeland security issues in both the U.S. and the developing world. In particular, he studies ways to ethically integrate strategic communication campaigns into domestic preparedness, training, and education efforts addressing both bio-terrorism and natural disasters. Carl has won numerous awards, including designation as Australia's 1998 Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner in Public Relations and the Outstanding Research Achievement Award in public relations from the International Communication Association.  His best-known books are Public Relations Theory (with Vincent Hazleton) and its recent sequel, Public Relations Theory II. 

Catherine Wright

e-mail: cwright5@gmu.edu

Catherine K. Wright ("Cathy") has a special interest in computer-mediated communication and technology as related to communication. Cathy received her PhD from Regent University in 2005. Her research interests in climate change focus on the diffusion of information through the Internet. She plans to study popular opinion leaders and how they influence other people during the five stages of adoption of a new behavior, product or service.

Connie Roser-
Renouf

 

e-mail: croserre@gmu.edu

Connie Roser-Renouf is a scholar with deep expertise in improving and evaluating the impact of community-based health campaigns and persuasion campaigns. She earned her PhD in Communication Research at Stanford University, where she had the opportunity to contribute to the Stanford Five Cities Project, an innovative study that used media and social marketing to reduce community-wide rates of heart disease risk. Prior to joining the Center at Mason, Connie taught and conducted research at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Denver; the University of Pittsburgh; and Humboldt State University.

Don Boileau

 

e-mail: dboileau@gmu.edu

Don Boileau is an expert in the areas of intercultural communication, communication theories, rhetorical criticism, classroom communication and public speaking.  His research is currently focused in two areas: religious sermons and improving the communication effectiveness of middle school-aged students. Don is currently President of the Eastern Communication Association and he is a Past President of Association of Communication Administrators.  He received his B. A. at Stanford University, MA and Ph.D. at University of Oregon, and is a returned Peace Corps volunteer [Korea, 1968-69].

Gary Kreps

 

e-mail: gkreps@gmu.edu

Gary L. Kreps is the Eileen and Steven Mandell Professor of Health Communication and the Chair of the Department of Communication at George Mason University. Gary's areas of expertise include health and risk communication, multicultural relations, organizational communication, health informatics, multimedia edutainment, social influence, and research methods. His published work includes more than 250 scholarly books, articles, and chapters concerning the applications of communication in society. Prior to joining the faculty at Mason, Gary served as the founding chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NIH), where he introduced and directed major national research programs to promote cancer prevention and control. He has also served as the founding dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University, executive director of the Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, and in faculty and academic administrative positions at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue universities. Gary has received numerous distinguished honors for his scholarship and has received research funding from the NIH, CDC, NSF, HRSA, the US Dept. of Education, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Katherine E.
Rowan

 

e-mail: krowan@gmu.edu

Katherine E. ("Kathy") Rowan is an expert in the areas of science and risk communication, and she is specifically interested in effective methods for earning trust and explaining complex science. Her most cited work has appeared in journals such as Health Communication, Risk Analysis, Communication Education, and Journal of Applied Communication Research and in edited volumes such as Communicating Uncertainty by Friedman, Dunwoody, and Rogers. Kathy was a professor at Purdue University before joining Mason’s faculty. She has spoken about effective communication of science to audiences at the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the National Academy of Sciences, and to staff of the U. S. Congress.

Mark C. Hopson

 

e-mail: mhopson@gmu.edu

Mark Hopson specializes in intercultural communication, and explores the dynamic ways in which culture impacts communication within organizational, institutional, and societal structures. His published research includes studies of intercultural organizing, community-based civil-rights and health initiatives, and diversity in daily life. Mark is currently gearing up to study intercultural aspects of climate change communication in the US. Mark earned his PhD in communication research at Ohio University.

Melinda Villagran

 

e-mail: mvilla@gmu.edu

Melinda Villagran conducts research on the interplay between health messages and culture in public and private institutions. Her areas of expertise include organizational communication, interpersonal communication, communication in health organizations, health disparities, cancer communication, and Latino health. Prior to joining the Mason faculty, she was a faculty member in the Departments of Communication at Texas State University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. She has authored or co-authored more than 30 published journal articles, book chapters, and instructional materials on communication topics.

Nithya
Muthuswamy

 

e-mail: nmuthus1@gmu.edu

Nithya Muthuswamy's research interests include development communication, communication for social change, health communication and cross cultural communication., Her recent research investigates the use of fear based messages in the context of HIV/AIDS prevention and behavior change in Namibia and India. Nithya received her BA in sociology from Maharaja Sayaji Rao University, Baroda, India, an MA in social work specializing in urban and rural community development from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, and an MA and PhD in communication research and urban studies from Michigan State University. She is currently preparing to conduct research on people’s mental models of climate change.

Robert Lichter

 

e-mail: slichter@gmu.edu

S. Robert Lichter directs Mason’s Center for Media and Public Affairs which conducts scientific studies of the news and entertainment media, and also directs the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) which works to improve the quality of statistical and scientific information in the news. Bob has authored or co-authored fourteen books and over a hundred scholarly articles and monographs and he is currently working on a book about foreign media coverage of the United States.  His most recent books are The Nightly News Nightmare: Television Coverage of Presidential Elections (2006, 2nd ed.); and The Mediated Presidency: Television News and Presidential Governance (2005). Bob’s op-ed articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and other newspapers. His current research interests span political communication, political sociology, and health and risk communication, and he has recently been focusing on climate change. Bob has previously taught at Princeton, Georgetown, and George Washington universities, and had fellowships at Yale University, Columbia University, and Smith College. He received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and his B. A., summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota.

Susan A. Crate

 

e-mail: scrate1@gmu.edu

Susan Crate brings an inherently interdisciplinary social science teaching and research agenda to our Center, focusing on the theoretical frames of human, cultural & political ecology, and environmental & cognitive anthropology. She has conducted research across southeastern Siberia since 1988 and worked with Viliui Sakha communities of western Sakha, northeast Siberia, Russia, since 1991. For her Ph.D. research, she focused on the cultural ecology of native post-Soviet adaptation in sub-arctic, Siberia, Russia. In 2006 she published a monograph that integrates many of her research foci entitled Cows, Kin and Globalization: The Ethnography of Sustainability. Since joining Mason in 2004, Susan maintains a strong teaching and research agenda in the circumpolar north and has also begun developing a research agenda in the metropolitan DC area, beginning with the project, "Development of a spatially explicit participatory model to explore anthropogenic on-site threats on rare aquatic resources of the Potomac Gorge."

Tim Gibson

 

e-mail: tgibson1@gmu.edu

Timothy Gibson's research interests include critical/cultural studies, the political economy of communication, popular culture, and political communication. Tim received his Ph.D. in Communication from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. His research has focused primarily on representations of wealth and poverty in urban America, and the circulation of these representations in the news media, in local communities, and among urban policy-makers. He has published two books, “Securing the Spectacular City: The Politics of Revitalization and Homelessness in Downtown Seattle” and “Urban Communication: Production, Text, Context” (co-edited with Mark Lowes). He is currently gearing up to interview journalists regarding how they make decisions about climate change coverage. Tim's climate change-related interests include exploring how unequal distributions of economic and social power distort climate change policy debates.

Xiaomei Cai

 

e-mail: xcai@gmu.edu

An expert in both survey research and content analysis, Xiaomei Cai's research focuses on the effects of new media technologies, children and new media, and the effects of mass media on children. Xiaomei has conducted research on how children's altruistic values are associated with their attitudes toward and willingness to help with climate change. Currently, she is preparing to conduct research on how children and adolescents think and feel about climate change, with an eye toward improving climate change communication targeting young audiences. She is also gearing up to study the interaction between parents and children with regard to climate change attitudes and behaviors.  Xiaomei earned her PhD in Communication at Indiana University at Bloomington, and obtained a masters degree in English linguistics from Beijing University, China.

Xiaoquan Zhao

 

e-mail: xzhao3@gmu.edu

Xiaoquan Zhao's research interests include message effects, public health campaign evaluation, media content analysis, and information processing. Xiaoquan has extensive experience in message testing; he has conducted many controlled experiments assessing the effectiveness of anti-drug messages used in large-scale campaigns, such as the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. His recent research focuses on message evaluation for climate change communication efforts, audience reactions to news reports on climate change, and patterns of climate change news coverage in China.  Xiaoquan received his PhD at the Annenburg School of Communication at University of Pennsylvania and masters degrees from Indiana University and Beijing University, China.

Matthew
Nisbet

 

e-mail: nisbetmc@gmail.com

Matthew C. Nisbet is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University. A widely published expert in the area of framing and public opinion, Nisbet uses focus groups, content analysis, in-depth interviews, case studies, and polling to study the communication dynamics of science policy debates. His current work on climate change examines how news coverage reflects and shapes policy, how strategists try to mold public perceptions, and how citizens make sense of the topic.

Anthony
Leiserowitz

 

e-mail: ecotone2@gmail.com

Anthony Leiserowitz is a Research Scientist and Director of the Yale Project on Climate Change. He is also a Principal Investigator at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University and Decision Research, Inc. He is a widely recognized expert on public climate change risk perceptions, policy preferences, and behavior. His research includes survey, experimental, and field studies at multiple scales including individual states (Alaska and Florida), the United States (five national surveys) and internationally (USA, UK, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina). He also recently conducted the first global assessment of public values, attitudes, and behaviors regarding sustainable development.

Christine Brittle

 

e-mail: christine@uncommoninsights.com

Christine Brittle, founder of Uncommon Insights, specializes in improving the ability of organizations to effectively communicate environmental, health, risk, and safety messages, and has been actively pursuing research on public opinion and climate change, including her 2005 doctoral research. She plans, designs, and implements research projects to enhance communications, including literature reviews, surveys, focus groups, and Web usability studies, and also writes communication materials for non-technical audiences. She has led communication projects for a variety of Federal agencies and nonprofit organizations, and currently teaches a course on marketing public programs.

Do Kyun Kim

 

e-mail: happyhappykim@gmail.com

Do Kyun Kim, a lecturer at Northeastern University, is a rapidly rising expert in the fields of diffusion of innovation, social network analysis, media effects, and communication and social change.  Do Kyun recently earned his PhD in communication research from Ohio University where he received the first Everett M. Rogers Award and was named the Everett M. Rogers Scholar for the 2005-2006 academic year.  With additional graduate degrees in economics and political science, Do Kyun is interested in examining the intersections between economic, political, media and social forces as they influence rates of adoption of innovations that are of benefit to society.  Do Kyun is currently writing review articles and preparing to conduct a test of popular opinion leader strategies as a means to accelerate community-wide adoption rates of climate change prevention behaviors.

Susan L. Cook

 

e-mail: cooks@mscd.edu

Susan L. Cook is an associate professor of technical communication at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Susan’s research interests include mediated learning, technology and cognition, and environmental communication with diverse audiences through multiple media. She applies diverse research methodologies and designs with the goal of finding and interpreting patterns that can help solve social and global problems, and she is currently planning research on the impact of mediated messages on public perceptions of climate change and environmental concerns. In addition to her work in the US, Susan has conducted research in Venezuela and been an invited speaker on the issue of timing in public messaging in Istanbul, Turkey.

Zhan Li

 

e-mail: lizhanfromxmu@xmu.edu.cn

Zhan Li, PhD (University of Pennsylvania, 2007). She is assistant professor in the School of Journalism & Communication at Xiamen University of China. Besides her PhD dissertation that evaluates media performance in covering global warming in terms of source and content diversity with taking deliberative democracy as the theoretical framework, she is interested in exploring how the media frame climate change as scientific and political discourse, and the role of the media in facilitating the public understanding of the issue.

Robert B. Cialdini

 

Doug McKenzie-Mohr

 

Stuart Oskamp