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About Karina Valdes

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So far Karina Valdes has created 695 blog entries.

Doctoral Students Awarded MIA Summer Field Research Grants

Doctoral students Soroya McFarlane and Kerli Kirch were each awarded the Miami Institute for the Americas’ (MIA) Summer Field Research Grants to work on a joint project that investigates how culture influences health, focusing on adolescent pregnancy in Jamaica. The project aims to create a cultural taxonomy of factors related to teen pregnancy. This will include an analysis of current campaigns and community media to evaluate the cultural relevance of messages and develop hypotheses about media effects.  In early August, McFarlane and Kirch are traveling to three locations in Jamaica for two weeks. While on location, the [...]

67th Annual Student Media Awards

On April 26, University of Miami School of Communication honored its students, alumni, and faculty at the 67th Annual Student Media Awards. Shoma Hall was filled with students, friends, and family, as hosts Danny New and S. Molly Dominick from UMTV’s Off the Wire introduced the first award as the “Please Become an Adjunct Award,” officially known as the Communicator of the Year. This year’s Communicator of the Year was UM alumnus Dan Le Batard. Le Batard graduated from UM in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in communication, majoring [...]

Student Film Addresses Hazing’s Dangers

When he joined a fraternity in freshman year at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Miami native Alejandro Victor Pallares never imagined someday he’d be shooting a film about the process. Now Pledge, centered on members of a fictional fraternity, will debut at this year’s Canes Film Festival, April 29-May 1, at the University of Miami Bill Cosford Cinema. Pallares, 23, a second-year graduate student in the UM School of Communication motion pictures program, is scriptwriter and director of the film, his first, though he’s worked on the films of others.  “I [...]

PREP Assists At Comic Cure’s First Outdoor Comedy Festival: A Rain Storm Turns Out To Be A Great Backdrop

On Friday, April 15, the Palmetto Bay community experienced the very first outdoor comedy festival, right in their backyards at Ludovici Park. The festival was hosted by Comic Cure, an organization built on promoting comedy in Miami by showcasing local talent and raising funds for local charities. For this particular show, a portion of every ticket sale benefited the Everglades Foundation. Brothers Benjamin and Richy Leis created Comic Cure in September 2015 and have since hosted comedy shows all throughout South Florida benefiting a wide variety of charities including The [...]

Dr. Weiting Tao Awarded Grant Funding from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication

Assistant Professor Dr. Weiting Tao from the University of Miami School of Communication's Department of Strategic Communication was recently awarded funding in the form of a grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at Penn State University. Tao’s project, Employee Prosocial Engagement in CSR through Empowerment in Decision Making, was awarded $10,000 by the center as part of their 2016-2017 Joint Faculty-Practitioner Grant. According to Tao, “The purpose of this project is to examine how companies can motivate employees’ prosocial behavior through corporate social responsibility [...]

2019-12-17T19:27:39-05:00April 22, 2016|Doctoral, Public Relations|

UM Student Shoots Film in Minus 43 F

On Nov. 11, 2015, the Chinese “Double 11” shopping day (like “Cyber Monday” in the U.S.), when Chinese girls were busy spending on clothes, Mingtian was desperate for money to complete her thesis film in the University of Miami School of Communication’s Master of Fine Arts program. Faced with a $15,000 shortage, the 24-year-old from Beijing decided to do crowdfunding on WeChat, the Chinese version of Instagram. “I thought that, besides buying merchandise, people may also want to spend money to help memorialize a special culture,” says Mingtian. Mingtian’s film, [...]

UMTV Wins 8 Journalism, Programming Awards

UMTV received three first place awards from the National Broadcasting Society’s honor society Alpha Epsilon Rho, three first place Region 3 Mark of Excellence awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, and two second place awards from the Florida Associated Press Broadcasters. The Mark of Excellence Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists honor the best in collegiate journalism reporting. SPJ’s Region 3 is comprised of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. The winners from University of Miami School of Communication are Oliver Redsten for Grove Wall in the Television [...]

UM Debate Wins Coastal Division Championship, Runner up in ACC Tournament

From April 15-17, the UM Debate Team of Renee Reneau and Michael Fuentes competed in the Atlantic Coast Conference Debate Championship tournament, hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and supported by the ACC Academic Consortium under the direction of David G. Brown.  "The ACC Debate Championship is a first class event that bridges the success of our outstanding athletic conference with the academic excellence of our member schools," says David Steinberg, director of debate.   The teams competed on both sides of the topic, Resolved: That [...]

2019-12-17T19:34:25-05:00April 18, 2016|Communication Studies|

Creative Activity and Research Grants Winners Announced

The School of Communication has announced the winners of the 2015-2016 Creative Activity and Research Grants. This year, both recipients hail from the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media. Dr. Christina Lane and Professor Dia Kontaxis have been selected by an interdisciplinary committee of peers from the school to receive direct cost funding to support their projects. The goal of this funding mechanism is to support work that results in clear and prominent scholarly and/or creative accomplishments that support the enhanced reputation of the School of Communication. Dr. Lane’s proposed [...]

2019-12-17T19:34:38-05:00April 11, 2016|Motion Pictures|

Luck of the Irish Prevails in Public Debate  

The University of Miami Debate Team hosted a three-person team of debaters from Ireland on Monday, April 4, at the Shalala Student Activity Center. The public debate focused on the motion that this house believes the political success of Donald J. Trump in the Republican primaries is a reflection of the demise of American democracy. The two teams competed in a hybrid debate combining elements of British parliamentary debate and town hall debate. During British parliamentary debate, each speaker is given seven minutes to state their argument for or against [...]