Influx of new faculty members signals a new era of growth for the Newhouse School

The Newhouse School will welcome a record 12 new faculty members this fall as the school continues to grow and flourish despite the challenges of the past 18 months.

“This diverse and talented group of scholars and professionals will help us expand and enhance our academic mission and continue to offer the excellent educational experience for which Newhouse is known,” says Newhouse dean Mark J. Lodato.

Full-Time Faculty

Seven new full-time faculty members—including an endowed chair and a department chair—bring a wide range of scholarly and professional experience and expertise to the school, enhancing an already robust Newhouse faculty.

Susan-Sojourna Collier
Assistant Professor
Television, Radio and Film

Collier is a screenwriter with extensive teaching experience at Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta University, Abu Dhabi Women’s College in the UAE and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her writing credits include “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” on ABC; “Through My Lens: A Study of Bullying in Atlanta”; “Conflict of Interest” on Aspire TV Network; “Switching Lanes” on Urban TV Network; and “Charge It to the Game: Rippling Effects of Gun Violence in Brooklyn.” She has also worked as freelance television producer with clients including NBC/Bravo Television, Women in Film (Los Angeles), the Brooklyn district attorney’s office and Al Roker Productions.

Nausheen Husain
Assistant Professor
Magazine, News and Digital Journalism / Broadcast and Digital Journalism

Husain comes to Newhouse from the Chicago Tribune, where she has been a senior reporter and developer since 2014. At the Tribune, Husain advocated for more consistent coverage of underrepresented communities and civil liberties issues, and contributed data analysis and cross-media visual storytelling for a number of important stories. She also served as a reporter and producer for the project Islam for Reporters and was a reporting intern with the Chicago Sun-Times. 

Moon Lee
Chair
Public Relations

Lee is a teacher and scholar whose research focuses primarily on communication technology development and evaluation, health communication, media processes and effects, public relations and human cognition and decision-making process. She holds a Ph.D. in mass communication/public relations from the University of Florida (UF). Her teaching areas include public relations, digital communication, health communication, communication theories and applications and media processes and effects. She joins Newhouse from UF, where she is an associate professor of public relations and serves as a primary or co-primary investigator on several grant projects. She has also held faculty positions at Washington State University.

Edecio Martinez
Executive Editor and Professor of Practice
Magazine, News and Digital Journalism / Broadcast and Digital Journalism

Martinez is an award-winning digital media professional with extensive reporting, writing and editing experience. He served as head of video at Ziff Davis for two years and was an executive producer with Condé Nast Entertainment before that. He has also held positions with Upworthy, The Weather Channel and CBS Interactive. Recently, he was an adviser to a range of media companies and startups on strategy, organizational design, content development and video production.

Srividya “Srivi” Ramasubramanian
Newhouse Professor

Ramasubramanian is a leading communication scholar whose work addresses contemporary global issues relating to media, diversity and social justice. She is widely recognized for her pioneering work on race and media, media literacy initiatives, implicit bias reduction and scholar-activism. She has over 100 publications to her credit and is the incoming editor-in-chief of Communication Monographs, the flagship journal of the discipline. Ramasubramanian, who holds a Ph.D. in mass communication from Pennsylvania State University, is the first woman and first person of color to serve as Newhouse Professor, an endowed chair position established at the Newhouse School in 1964. She comes to Newhouse from Texas A&M University.

Hector Rendon
Assistant Professor
Communications

Rendon is a communications scholar with expertise in media and diversity. His portfolio of academic research focuses on issues related to critical race studies, intercultural communication and ethnic relations through media, with research projects exploring concepts of media representations of minorities, racialization, interdisciplinary collaboration and media reliability. He also has a background in data analytics and social network analysis. He has earned more than $300,000 in grants. Rendon comes to Newhouse from Ryerson University in Toronto. His hire is part of Syracuse University’s Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster, focusing on media and diversity.

Milton Santiago
Assistant Professor
Visual Communications

Santiago is a cinematographer who is well-versed in both film and high-definition image capture and embraces emerging technologies. A native New Yorker, he comes to Syracuse from Los Angeles, where he has led photography for feature films, documentaries, commercials and music videos. His work has been featured at the Tribeca Film Festival, Copenhagen Film Festival, Cleveland Film Festival and South by Southwest, among others. Santiago has also taught cinematography courses as Columbia College Hollywood, first as an adjunct and then as the faculty lead. He was previously a writer/producer for the Sundance Channel and a post-production editor for Showtime Networks.

Visiting Faculty

Visiting professors round out this year’s new hires, bringing with them extensive professional experience following long careers in all areas of the industry—from broadcasting, film and photography to advertising and public relations.

Liz Habib
Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor
Broadcast and Digital Journalism

Habib spent 16 years at KTTV in Los Angeles as the primary sports anchor and show host, and before that was the main news anchor at KTVK in Phoenix and an anchor and reporter at WKYC in Cleveland and WTOV in Steubenville/Wheeling, West Virginia. She has contributed to several other news and sports outlets including CNN, FOX Sports, FOX News and NPR. She is the winner of two Emmy Awards.

Jordan Kligerman
Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor
Television, Radio and Film

Kligerman spent five years with Syracuse University Athletics, most recently as assistant athletics director for creative services, where he led video and graphic design for social media, commercials, development, in-arena productions and special events, and contributed to broadcasts for the ACC Network. He helped develop Newhouse’s Sports Documentary course with Olivia Stomski, director of the Newhouse Sports Media Center. Previously, he spent eight years at NFL Films, where he helped produce content for ABC, FOX, NBC, ESPN and NFL Network.

Paula Nelson
Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor
Visual Communications

Nelson spent 11 years at The Boston Globe as page one picture editor, director of photography and, finally, as the paper’s first-ever assistant managing editor of photography. Prior to that, she spent 18 years at The Dallas Morning News as assistant director of photography, picture editor for special projects and senior staff photographer. She was part of Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at both the Globe (in 2014) and the Dallas Morning News (1994). Nelson is an alumna of Newhouse’s multimedia, photography and design program and has taught several classes in visual communications and the Military Visual Journalism Program. 

Carrie Riby
Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor
Advertising

Riby is an award-winning strategic advertising professional with experience in all forms of account leadership and media planning. She specializes in communication integration, strategic planning, media strategy, audience/market research, social media, negotiation, education and intern mentoring. She is the marketing director for Black Button Distilling, and was previously strategic account director for Butler/Till Media; media director at Roberts Communications; vice president, business-to-business global communication director for Saatchi and Saatchi; and media planner for Mullen Advertising.

Erika Schneider
Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor
Public Relations

Schneider is a public relations scholar who specializes in strategic communication with an emphasis on crisis communication. Her research strives to optimize organizational responses that prioritize stakeholder and societal wellbeing, and she often uses experimental design studies to investigate how organizations approach crisis responsibility and use communication to lessen the effects of a crisis. She plans to continue investigating how organizations can navigate crises induced by emerging health issues, scientific topics and (mis/dis)information. She holds a Ph.D. in strategic communication from the University of Missouri.

The new faculty members will arrive in campus in time for the start of the fall semester late this month.

“The Newhouse School is committed to recruiting communications professionals and scholars who elevate our ability to meet the needs of the professions, bring diverse perspectives and experience to the classroom and contribute thoughtful research and discussion to this rapidly changing discipline,” Lodato says.