Dr. Ronald C. Arnett, professor and chair of communication & rhetorical studies, along with various faculty from the department recently garnered numerous awards from the National Communication Association (NCA) during its 103rd annual convention.
Arnett was presented with the NCA’s 2017 Distinguished Scholar award at the event, which was held in Dallas, Texas. The association’s highest accolade, the award honors a lifetime of scholarly achievement in the study of human communication. Recipients are selected by their peers to showcase the best of the Communication discipline.
“This award constitutes well-deserved recognition of Dr. Arnett’s outstanding scholarly record and brings honor to the entire Duquesne University community,” said Duquesne President Ken Gormley. “We are very grateful for Dr. Arnett’s academic leadership on this campus and are extremely proud to witness this professional tribute to his work by his peers in the National Communication Association.”
Arnett also received both the NCA Communication Ethics Division 2017 Top Book Award and the NCA Philosophy of Communication Division 2017 Distinguished Book Award for Levinas’s Rhetorical Demand: The Unending Obligation of Communication Ethics.
Arnett’s scholarly work has been foundational to philosophy of communication, communication ethics, and communication and religion—three areas of communication scholarship for which Arnett is widely recognized as a leading voice.
Also honored during the NCA convention were the following faculty from the communication & rhetorical studies department:
- Dr. Janie M. Harden Fritz, the NCA Communication Ethics Division 2017 Teaching Award
- Dr. Garnet C. Butchart, the NCA Philosophy of Communication Division 2017 Distinguished Journal Article award for The Communicology of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida: Reflections on the Sign-Body Experience of Communication.
In addition, Dr. Craig T. Maier received the Religious Communication Association’s 2017 Book of the Year Award for Communicating Catholicism: Rhetoric, Ecclesial Leadership and the Future of the Roman Catholic Diocese. The association is an academic society founded in 1973 for scholars, teachers, students, clergy, journalists and others who share an interest in religious speech, rhetoric, media and performance.
“Faculty from the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies are really doing outstanding work,” said Arnett. “They are outstanding colleagues, repeatedly performing at a high level of excellence.”