Pictured from left to right are the Communications program faculty: Dr. Allen Larson, Dr. Jennifer Wood and Dr. Abhinav Aima.
Communications Program faculty
Dr. Jennifer Wood
Associate Professor, Program Co-Coordinator
[email protected] | 724-334-6727 | 111A Administration Building
Dr. Jennifer Wood is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State New Kensington and one of three faculty members in the campus’s four-year degree program in Communications. Dr. Wood teaches courses in conflict resolution, rhetoric, research and effective speech. Her research focuses on crime victim policy, the prison industrial complex and restorative justice. She has been a volunteer victim/offender mediator in juvenile cases since 2002 and in 2008 began serving as a state victim/offender mediator in crimes of violence. She also moderates an on-line listserv called Prison-CARE (Communication, Activism, Research & Education) that focuses on prison issues.
Dr. Allen Larson
Associate Professor, Program Co-Coordinator
[email protected] | 724-334-6731 | 108A Administration Building
Allen Larson, Associate Professor of Communications, earned his B.A. from the University of Maryland, his M.A. from Syracuse University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh while also working in various capacities as a communications professional. Larson’s published research scholarship focuses upon the political economy of media institutions and popular culture. He serves as coordinator of Penn State New Kensington’s digital communications lab coordinator and as co-coordinator of the B.A. program in Communications. Larson teaches courses on cinema studies, mass media and society, digital media production, and public relations, along with directing senior research projects.
Dr. Kasey Hudak
Associate Professor, Corporate Communication
[email protected] | 724-334-6715 | 024 Science Building
Dr. Hudak is an Associate Professor of Corporate Communication.
She received her PhD in rhetoric and communication, with focus in integrated marketing communications, and a master's degree in corporate communication from Duquesne University. Prior to her transfer to the New Kensington campus, Dr. Hudak taught as an Assistant Professor of Corporate Communication at Penn State Lehigh Valley (PSLV) for six years. She has served as a board member for the Integrated Energy Solutions for Entrepreneurs (IESE), advised PSLV's Lambda Pi Eta Communication Honors Society (LPH), and co-advised the student-run Communication Society.
Her work on city branding has been featured in the international book, City Branding Campaigns and Methods for Promoting Tourist Destinations, while her narrative theory has been published in several journals: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy; Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; and Culture, Theory and Critique. She has also won the campus Outstanding Research and/or Creative Accomplishment award for her research.
Dr. Hudak has traveled extensively in Mexico and the Caribbean. In 2016, she accompanied students to Rome and went on to lead two study abroad trips in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, Dr. Hudak designed a co-curricular and embedded study abroad course for CAS 271N, where students from PSLV were paired with students from the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University on an international digital storytelling project. Dr. Hudak won PSLV’s Academic Affairs Innovation in Teaching Award for this cross-disciplinary, co-curricular, and international collaboration. In 2019, Dr. Hudak took another CAS 271N class to Greece (Athens and Santorini) and partnered with Athens University of Economics and Business for this digital storytelling project.
Dr. Abhinav Aima
Associate Teaching Professor, Internship Coordinator
[email protected] | 724-334-6713 | 114 Administration Building
Abhinav Aima worked as a newspaper journalist in India, and traveled to Kashmir and Lebanon during his graduate studies. He received a B.A. in Print Journalism from Delhi University, an M.A. in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Montana, and is ABD (all but dissertation) in his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from Ohio University. His primary research interests are in the media coverage of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia. His professional development work has included a visit to Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2009, to study how journalists cover the communal disruptions of the peace process. He advises the Penn State New Kensington student-run newspaper The Nittany Pride. He directs the Communications internships on campus, and is the Vice Head and Program Chair of the Internships and Careers Interest Group at AEJMC. He teaches journalism and communications courses at Penn State New Kensington.