Andersch Award winner brings ‘compassion and wisdom’ to communication students

Dr. Angela F. Cooke-Jackson came from a close-knit family and grew up with a passion for music. Her path over the years changed from music education to health communication and behavioral science, but one thing stood steady in her personal and professional journey: her community and the bonds with people that made her the woman she is today.  

Cooke-Jackson, associate professor of communication at California State University, Los Angeles, was presented with the Elizabeth G. Andersch award and gave a lecture titled “A Lifespan Approach – Embracing Identity, Representation & Intersectional Ways of Being with Compassion and Wisdom.”  

A legacy of excellence

Given by the School of Communication Studies in the Scripps College of Communication, the Andersch Award honors Elizabeth G. Andersch, who joined the faculty at Ohio University in 1943 and was the first woman to earn tenure within the school. The award is given every year to an educator who exhibits excellence in teaching and mentorship, and it is what brought Cooke-Jackson to Ohio University on February 25. She shared her experience with mentorship and pedagogy in health communications, how her community formed her into who she is, and how these communities form us too. 

Cooke-Jackson is an experienced educator in the field of health communication and behavioral science. She says the Andersch award allowed her to look back on her academic experience and reflect on how it had evolved. She entered college as a music major, and credits one of her professors at the time with providing the understanding she needed when she began to realize music wasn’t the direction she wanted to take.  

“That left a really big indentation on me, that this professor, who I sat in his class week after week, that they not only saw me as a person, but that they understood and heard my story,” she recalls. “It’s been one of the key things that I take with me that I got from that professor, was to stop and ask people about themselves and hear about their story and understand their journey.”  

The experience left Cooke-Jackson with the value of fostering meaningful relationships and bonds with mentees and students. She now finds herself in a mentorship position through her research, teaching, family life and beyond. These experiences brought her to OHIO to accept and lecture for the Andersch award. 

“I would say the award means to me the opportunity to be acknowledged for mentorship and teaching… it’s an opportunity to travel back and to think about the journey.” 

"Tell me about yourself"

Cooke-Jackson’s lecture encouraged her audience to acknowledge their own stories to gain insight into themselves, build communities and understand others.  

“We are all embedded with different identities,” Cooke-Jackson said during her lecture. “This makes us [the] complex, complicated humans that we are. Respect it; be careful about making assumptions about each other’s identities.”  

Cooke-Jackson emphasizes that the world would be a more positive place if we took the time to understand others more frequently. 

“We need to have a world that’s kinder, stops giving people a name, and starts asking, ‘tell me about yourself.’”  

Lynn Harter, professor of communication studies and co-director of the Barbara Geralds Institute for Storytelling and Social Impact, introduced Cooke-Jackson for her lecture.  

“Sometimes we meet teacher-scholars whose work inspires us, and we find their humanity even more inspiring,” Harter says. “Dr. Cooke-Jackson is one of those people, and her visit to campus revealed why she was selected to receive the Elizabeth Andersch Award for Outstanding Teaching, Scholarship, and Mentorship. During her visit, she reminded all who met her to pursue important questions with courage, creativity, and a desire to elevate the human spirit.” 

Inspired audience

Students from across the country have been impacted by Cooke-Jackson’s dedication to mentoring. Angelina Buynak, an undergraduate student studying psychology at OHIO who attended the lecture, notes what stood out to her. 

“When I went to the lecture so many things stood out to me, but something that I think about now daily is ‘you are fearfully and wonderfully made, there is no one else like you,’” Buynak says. “Something else that really stood out to me was ‘community is the embodiment of mentorship and research,’ meaning that everything I need is right with me in the people I hold close in my life. It made me really think about my family and friends and the community I have built throughout my life.” 

Cooke-Jackson says she hopes students take what they learned from her lecture into their educational and personal journey. 

“I want them to take away from the lecture that community is important,” she says. “How we engage with communities often times happens authentically, and it’s oftentimes within us, but we believe sometimes that we have to go looking for it, and sometimes I think we have to just foster what we already have inside of us. I think that our histories are important, and that we need to do a better job of sharing them.”