Reilly Center Lamar Fellows | LSU Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs

Lamar Visiting Scholars 

 

Charlie and Carol Lamar photographCharlie and Carole Lamar, founders and sponsors of the Lamar Visiting Scholars program.

 

The Lamar Visiting Scholars program promotes media and public affairs research and creative activity that benefits the Manship School, LSU community, alumni, and broader mass communication community. The Lamar Scholar’s year-long tenure at LSU can include working with the Reilly Center to produce public events, conducting research, and developing creative works designed for public consumption, such as blog posts or white papers, related to their research. 

The Reilly Center hosts two types of Lamar Visiting Scholars on a rotating basis. Recent Ph.D. graduates, or post-doc professionals, who focus their research on timely matters in disciplines such as Mass Communication, Political Science, Computer Science, or a related field. Nationally-prominent professionals with distinguished careers in journalism, advertising, public relations, or political communication are eligible to participate as Professional Lamar Visiting Scholars.   

Charlie and Carole Lamar, long-time supporters of the Manship School, established the program.

 

Meet Our Current Scholars


 

Sherella Cupid

 

Sherella Cupid

Cupid is an Interdisciplinary Researcher-Practitioner and Educator from the Baltimore Metropolitan area. Her research centers on the experiences of Black women and girls in education, with a focus on Black doctoral women and Black faculty women, sister circles, mentorship, Black feminism and womanism. Currently, she is creating digital sister circles, via her podcasts, Lirae Journey and Sista Docs Exhale, and other emerging projects. She holds a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), an M.Ed. with a specialization in At-Risk and Diverse Learners from Goucher College, and a B.A. in International Area Studies, with a minor in Africana Studies from Drexel University.

Cupid's project,“Investigating Sister Circles in Medical and Health Professions During the Pandemic” focuses on  the experiences of Black women working in healthcare and whether sister circles helped them navigate the challenges they faced professionally. Further, through an intersectional lens, this research highlights how race, gender and health impacts the professional careers and wellness of participants. Cupid employs a national survey to understand sister circle experiences, along with focus groups to mirror sister circles –support groups for and by Black women that gather as a form of socialization and sustainability. This format helps to capture the everyday experiences of often understudied groups. 


Willow Sauermilch headshot

Willow Sauermilch

Willow Sauermilch joins the Reilly Center from Texas Tech University where she earned a Ph.D. in Media and Communication and a master’s in Mass Communications. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on media processing and effects at the intersection of children/adolescent and disability media use. Building off of her career as a speech-language pathologist in educational and healthcare settings, Willow’s work focuses on communication development and health in a technologically-saturated society. Her translational research focuses on drawing connections between research and children’s daily media lives necessary to support the work of parents, educators, and healthcare professionals who, by default, serve as media mentors. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Children & Adolescent Media, Journal of Special Education Technology, and Evidence-Based Practice Briefs.  

 

 

Meet Our Past Scholars


Ke Jiang

Ke Jiang

2017-2019

Ke Jiang is the Reilly Center's second Lamar Family Post-Doctoral Researcher. Currently, she works in conjunction with the Social Media Analysis and Creation (SMAC) Laboratory at the Manship School of Mass Communication. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Davis in 2017. Her research focuses on international communication, social and semantic network analysis, social media analysis, data mining, and data visualization. Her previous studies have been published in a wide range of journals, including International Journal of Communication, Government Information Quarterly, Social Networks and Mining, Scientometrics, Quality & Quantity, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, and Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia.


Paige Brown Jarreau, the first Lamar Post-Doctoral scholar

Paige Brown Jarreau

2015-2016

The first post-doctoral candidate to hold the position of Lamar Visiting Scholar, Paige Brown Jarreau, earned her doctorate from the Manship School in 2015. While pursuing a Ph.D., she focused her research on effective science communication. More specifically, she studied the characteristics of science blog consumers and the types of content they read to ascertain how writers can better communicate science topics. Her dissertation,  All the Science that's Fit to Blog, is available online through LSU Digital Commons.


Inaugural Lamar Visiting Scholar, Steve Buttry

Steve Buttry

2014-2015

The inaugural Lamar Visiting Scholar, Steve Buttry, held the position for the 2014-2015 academic year. During his tenure, he taught classes, created a plan to utilize grant funds to develop methods of news communication using social media, helped develop the Manship School's groundbreaking Social Media Lab, and coached LSU Student Media on ways to become more digitally oriented. A successful journalist whose career took him around the country and globe, Buttry became the director of student media at LSU following his time as a Lamar Scholar. He recently passed away, but served as the director long enough to leave his mark on the hearts and minds of the Manship School family.