Elizabeth M. Jenkins

Specializations: Computer-mediated communication, interpersonal communication

My research seeks to understand interpersonal and health communication in new media contexts. I am a social scientific researcher, who uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to respond to critical research questions about mediated communication as it relates to power, coercion, identity, harassment and lying. My research has been published in Computers in Human Behavior – a top-tier interdisciplinary computer-mediated communication journal, and in Journal of Children and Media – a premier journal for research concerning child and teenager media use. Currently, I have manuscripts at varying stages of review at Discourse Processes, Computers in Human Behavior, Pennsylvania Communication Annual, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and a book chapter in a sexual health communication text. My research has also been presented at local, state, regional, national, and international conferences. Moreover, my research and my participation in higher education has been funded by several research grants, scholarships, and awards. I also have been invited to attend competitively-recognized conferences. I serve as an ad hoc journal reviewer at three journals and have been invited to speak about sexting and other topics, of which I am considered an expert.

Through earning a Certificate of College and University Teaching from Ball State University’s Teacher’s College, my skills and training for education have served me well. For example, I have won several awards for my outstanding teaching. In the last four years, I have created six new course preparations. I have taught one of these new course preps, Communication and New Technology, several times across several course variations – as the sole instructor of 100 undergraduate students, as a face-to-face seminar, and as an online section.

Further, I have served at each level of higher education as an executive committee member at the National Communication Association, as a member of the Ohio University Provost Search Committee, as the Graduate Student Senator at Ohio University for the Scripps College of Communication, and as the inaugural assessment intern for the School of Communication Studies. I am proud to have served in various capacities within the Fort Wayne, Muncie, and Athens communities, as well. In particular, my service as an intern at the Fort Wayne Sexual Assault Treatment Center and the subsequent coordination of a Demin Day event to honor, remember, and celebrate sexual assault victims was especially important to my development as a scholar, teacher, and person.