Digital Impact Report 2024
A YEAR OF TRANSITION
Saluting two exceptional leaders
The cover of this year’s impact report highlights many of the characteristics that have defined our work at Moody College in the 2023-24 school year. Perhaps one of the most notable is “transition.”
Rachel Davis Mersey, previously the college’s associate dean for research, was named interim dean in June last year and then permanent dean of the college in January. She has been a steadfast and visionary leader, so much so that she was recently chosen to serve as interim provost for The University of Texas at Austin. While a tremendous win for UT, her recent appointment is also a bittersweet moment for us at Moody.
During her brief tenure, Mersey set forth a clear roadmap for the future, outlining strategic goals that will continue to steer us in the years to come. These goals include enhancing experiential learning opportunities for our students, fostering high-impact research and forging collaborative partnerships that will benefit not only Moody College but also our campus, communities, industries and society at large.
Interim Provost Mersey speaks to first-year students at Gone to Texas in August 2024. Photo by Lizzie Chen
Interim Provost Mersey speaks to first-year students at Gone to Texas in August 2024. Photo by Lizzie Chen
We wish Mersey the best in her interim role as provost and are thrilled to have such a strong Moody ambassador at the UT leadership level. We are confident in the direction of our new interim dean, Anita Vangelisti. With her more than three decades of dedicated service to Moody College, Vangelisti is well-equipped to guide our faculty, staff and students to even greater excellence.
Vangelisti came to UT in 1991 as an assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 2002. She currently holds the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication and recently served as the senior associate dean for faculty affairs and graduate education.
In her time with Moody College, Vangelisti has successfully negotiated significant increases in the number and size of graduate fellowships and stipends, increasing student financial support. She led the launch of the college’s first Option III program, which includes graduate certificates and a master’s program, working closely with a team of college leaders to expand academic offerings. Additionally, she has expertly managed the promotion and tenure process within Moody, ensuring a fair and rigorous evaluation of faculty performance. We are excited to see what Mersey and Vangelisti accomplish in the year ahead.
Thank you for being part of our journey.
A message from the Interim Dean
Dear Moody College friends,
The start of classes brought a major change to Moody. Our outstanding dean, Rachel Davis Mersey, was asked to serve as interim provost for the University. This is an incredible honor for Dean Mersey. It says something that the students, faculty and staff in Moody already knew: She is an exceptional leader. UT will benefit from her visionary ideas, keen sense of strategy and collaborative approach.
I will sorely miss working with Rachel in the Dean’s Office this year. My goal as interim dean is to ensure that the excellent projects that she — along with our faculty, staff, students and alumni — has set into motion move forward as seamlessly as possible. I am confident that we will navigate this change successfully together, maintain our stature as the top communication college in the country and achieve even greater distinction in the years ahead.
I have never been more enthusiastic about serving Moody College than I am right now. I care deeply about this college and how it helps students meet the moment — keeping pace with the continuous changes happening in our communication fields as artificial intelligence, immersive technology and new social media platforms transform our lives.
In the past year, we have made groundbreaking advances in AI, taken home top national and international awards, welcomed talented new faculty and leadership, and celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Moody Foundation’s transformational gift that gave our college its name and has supported many of its accomplishments in the past decade. These successes are not just ours but also yours, our valued Moody College supporters.
I am incredibly grateful to each of you for supporting Moody and being part of our journey forward.
With best wishes and hook ’em,
Anita Vangelisti
A YEAR IN REVIEW
Unveiled this year
Moody College unveils new curricula, programs and creative work
New faculty and leadership
Expertise spans creative advertising, speech-language pathology, sports broadcasting and production, and more
10 years of being Moody
Moody College celebrates a ‘watershed moment’
Moody milestones
The International Symposium on Online Journalism and Moody Writing Support Program celebrate anniversaries in 2024
A year in highlights
Check out some of our most memorable moments from the past year
Awards and achievements
Moody College faculty, students and alumni take home A-list awards
STUDENT PERSPECTIVES
Faculty distinction
Breaking ground using today's latest technologies and exploring tomorrow's greatest opportunities
At Moody College, we continuously anticipate the evolving demands of the media industry to equip our students with the essential knowledge, skills and insights for success. This year, our faculty have been at the forefront of research and teaching in some of today's most important areas, including sports media, content creation and health communication. We are proud to be recognized as leaders in these dynamic spaces.
Faculty research and expertise
The bilingual mind
Moody College researchers explore how bilingualism impacts the onset and treatment of certain types of dementia
Building a brand off the field
UT Austin athletes and students score big with Moody College NIL branding class
Today's creator economy
Moody College prepares students for careers as influencers, talent agents, marketing executives and more
Supporting the future of communication
Gifts ensure Moody success
A message from the Chief Development Officer
To our Moody College supporters,
I want to begin this message by introducing myself. My name is Amy Gogolin, and I am the new chief development officer for Moody College. I began my UT career 10 years ago here at Moody before taking on roles as the chief development officer for the School of Undergraduate Studies and at Texas Development, where I led family-giving efforts.
In these positions, I was fortunate to see the incredible work that happens on this campus — from lifesaving new scientific discoveries to groundbreaking feats in engineering and thousands of students who go on to change the world. Excellence is not a goal at The University of Texas at Austin: It’s a state of mind. And nowhere is that more evident than at Moody College, which is shaping the future of communication through compelling creative works, innovative research and significant advancements in treating communication challenges.
That’s why, after a decade at UT, I am humbled and honored to return to Moody College to lead its development team. Their hard work and dedication have helped position us as one of the top communication colleges in the country. In the past fiscal year alone, the development team has helped raise more than $16 million, including a $500,000 endowment set up by the Effie and Wofford Cain Foundation to support the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research. We have also received numerous gifts to provide student scholarships.
I am excited to see our direction under interim Dean Anita Vangelisti’s steadfast and expert leadership. She will continue to lay the groundwork for many important collaborations to provide our students with in-demand skills in creative AI, sports production and broadcasting, and high-impact research into crucial areas such as media ethics and misinformation.
I am eager to lead the development team in those efforts with authenticity, an aspirational mindset and a relentless pursuit of excellence. Thank you for trusting me and being a part of our journey. We couldn’t reach these tremendous heights without you.
Hook ‘em!
Amy Gogolin
Generous grant supports Moody College’s groundbreaking stuttering research center
Photo courtesy of Blank Center
Photo courtesy of Blank Center
In May 2024, the Effie and Wofford Cain Foundation gave a grant to the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research in honor of Lynn Fowler, who served with dedication as its executive director for more than 25 years. This grant has established the Lynn Ferguson Fowler Dream. Speak. Live. Endowed Excellence Fund, which will support the Blank Center’s mission in perpetuity. The Blank Center, founded and led by Professor Courtney Byrd, who holds the Dale and Tina Holder Endowed Chair in Stuttering Leadership, is pioneering a shift in clinical practice to treat stuttering and is the leading center in education, research and treatment. The Blank Center’s model empowers children, teens and adults to stutter openly, speak confidently, communicate effectively and advocate meaningfully so that stuttering never stops them from living their lives to the fullest. The Cain Foundation’s grant will help train speech-language pathology students and professionals, expand research efforts to move the field forward, and scale access to treatment at no cost to people who stutter worldwide.
“Lynn’s unwavering belief in our mission has given me the strength to continue to reach for the stars,” Byrd said. “With the Cain Foundation’s remarkable support, we will be steps closer to achieving far beyond what we have yet to imagine. I am so grateful for this grant and will seek every opportunity to honor Lynn and all members of the Cain Foundation in every life we touch.”
"I am extremely proud to be a Texas Moody graduate. I hope that making a major contribution can help students focus on their time at Moody and not worry about how to pay for it. Perhaps it will also help students know that there are UT graduates who are so passionate about the college that they are willing to invest in ways that will support future generations."
—Sadie Cornelius, Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations alumna, whose $100,000 estate gift provided through the Moody Legacy Challenge will support student scholarships for advertising and public relations students
Looking ahead
Moody College invests in the future of communication
Moody College is focused on enhancing learning both inside and outside the classroom — by building successful collaborative partnerships, increasing opportunities for experiential learning and producing the highest-impact research.
Read more about our top investment priorities to ensure we better serve our students, partners and communities.
New opportunities in sports production and broadcasting
Moody College has become the destination for students who want to work in sports media because of its innovative curriculum and successful partnership with Texas Athletics. This collaboration has allowed us to create programs such as Bevo Video Productions, which gives students access to high-quality equipment and professional supervision as they produce video content for on-campus clients, including filming more than 100 live Longhorn sporting events annually. We consider Bevo Video one of the crown jewels of Texas Student Media, and starting this year, Moody students involved in the program will benefit from working in the new, state-of-the-art Texas Studios Powered by Dell Technologies to produce live games on the SEC Network. To expand our sports media opportunities across Moody, we have hired expert faculty and started offering new sports production and broadcasting courses. We are currently seeking approval to create a minor in this space. The college continues to pursuing funding for top-of-the-line equipment, student stipends and endowed professorships to make these visions a reality.
Enhancing immersive learning and creative AI education
Moody College is preparing students for the future of content creation, equipping them with the tools they need to create unique immersive experiences that can transport viewers to the sidelines of a championship game, inside a film scene, in the Sistine Chapel or into another galaxy. It’s a new way of storytelling, and we aim to give our students the technology and skills to turn their boldest visions into reality. We are collaborating with the College of Fine Arts, the College of Natural Sciences and the School of Architecture to bring a state-of-the-art Cosm CX display system to Communication Building B's historic Studio 6A, the previous home of “Austin City Limits,” that will allow students to design these immersive experiences and bring their content to life. Additional building renovations will add new studio and production spaces equipped with advanced lighting and technology. These spaces will be an interdisciplinary hub for collaboration, immersive learning, creative AI implementation, and film production and screenings.
Greater possibilities through UTNY and UTLA
The UTNY and UTLA programs have made significant strides over the past year, welcoming more students than ever to spend a semester living and working in New York or Los Angeles. The opportunity opens them up to careers that traditionally have a high barrier to entry, including at companies and studios such as Netflix, NBCUniversal, Red Light Management, ABC News, The New York Times and more. While thousands of students have participated in UTNY and UTLA since their founding, financial need is the most common reason admitted students decline admission to the programs. The price of a semester is beyond that of a traditional semester spent on campus in Austin, which makes it cost-prohibitive for many. In the coming years, we aim to increase scholarship support to ensure that all students, regardless of economic background, can benefit from these programs and have the unique opportunity to live and work in these industry hubs.
Elevating the Honors Program
The Moody College Honors Program welcomes the most curious and esteemed students to receive an intimate and engaging education that prepares them to become leaders in their fields. They access specialized curricula, have opportunities to attend distinguished lectures and social events, engage in crucial social projects, and benefit from a supportive community of their peers. We want to ensure more students have the opportunity to be a part of the program by providing much-needed scholarships. The average scholarship award amount is about $3,800 per year, while the tuition rate for in-state students is $11,230 and total cost of attendance is about $30,000 per year. Moody College is also fundraising for student research theses, capstone projects and travel opportunities that advance students’ academic and professional development.
Increasing impact through our research centers
Moody College boasts 14 research centers, institutes and programs that advance innovation and scholarship in crucial areas such as health communication, language disorders research, brand and demand analytics, civic engagement, and more. We are focused on ensuring these centers conduct high-impact research that address today's societal challenges. One of these centers is our Center for Media Engagement, which partners with newsrooms, social media platforms and civic organizations to generate practical, research-informed insights about the media’s role in democracy, exploring contemporary, real-world issues as they happen. When a new social media platform is introduced or voting misinformation surfaces, the center’s work helps inform communities, policymakers and journalists. As elections take center stage in the U.S. and generative AI changes the way we consume and create media, we aim to increase support for the center’s staff and students as they work with internationally recognized experts to conduct research that serves the greater good.
Contributions:
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer:
Kathleen Mabley
Art direction lead:
Amanda Buchanan
Managing editor:
Mary Huber
Digital media lead:
Lizzie Chen
Creative producer:
Leticia Rincon
Copy editor:
Emily Quigley
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