Southwestern was well represented at the Western States Communication Association annual conference in San Diego from February 27–March 2. Two students from Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar’s fall capstone class presented research at the Undergraduate Scholars Research Conference. Chloe London Jordan ’26 presented her capstone paper “Return to Whiteness: How ‘Return to the Land’ Platforms White Supremacy” and John Reese ’26 presented “Deconstructing Far-Right Rhetoric on X: A Case Study of the X Account End Wokeness.” Professor of Communication Studies Valerie Renegar was there to clap and cheer before presenting her work with Dr. Kirsti Cole from North Carolina State University titled “The Weight of Stigma” about GLP-1 discourse.

Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar was featured as an interview source in a set of recent news stories produced by News 6 in Tulsa, OK, as part of their Roadside Memorial Project. The project, directed by News 6 reporter Katie Eastman, is comprised of several stories originally broadcast between December 22–26, 2025, including a documentary-style story about roadside memorials titled “Love on the Side of the Road,” and a separate news profile of Bednar as a researcher of roadside shrines and collective trauma. The written stories and videos are available here.

Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar presented an invited lecture titled “Remembering Jessie Daniel Ames: A Legacy of Social Activism Connecting Southwestern and Georgetown,” as part of the Preservation Georgetown Lecture Series, on October 15.

On January 9, the Mission-Driven Medicine website was launched. The website is the culmination of a project carried out by the Summer 2024 Organizational Communication class taught by Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar, and features the work of Lauren Chisholm ’24, Alexa Delenela ’25, Tre Flores ’26, Lauren Wise ’25, and Justin Zamora ’24. The website is a fieldwork-based public-facing humanities project analyzing the organizational communication at the Houston Methodist Hospital system.

Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar presented a plenary talk titled “Bringing the Archives Out of the Archives: Mobilizing and Reframing University Archives in Critiques of Campus Commemorative Landscapes” at the Austin Archives Bazaar, held at Scholz Garten in Austin on April 14. The talk described the experience of developing the Placing Memory Interactive Story Map in Summer 2023 with Megan Firestone, Head of Distinctive Collections and Archives, and a team of 11 student researchers: Bettina Castillo ’24, Max Colley ’24, Adrianna Flores-Vivas ’24, Lainey Gutierrez ’25, Teddy Hoffman ’24, Hannah Jury ’24, Shawn Maganda ’24, Harper Randolph ’25, Andrea Stanescu ’24, Michelle Taing ’24, and Ava Zumpano ’25.