The Program for Learning and Community Engagement at Texas A&M University-Texarkana will present “Verifying Sources in Science Reporting OR How NOT to Broadcast about Race” featuring Dr. Kevin Ells on Monday, March 27, at3 p.m. in University Center 217 on the A&M-Texarkana campus, 7101 University Ave., Texarkana, Texas.
“The presentation will survey how journalistic reports of social science research do not always convey research findings precisely,” Dr. Ells said. “I’ll debunk the widely held but logically untenable belief in the direct connection of claims of fact with policy claims – for example, science and politics, with a startling example of an ex-Cabinet secretary talk radio host trying to discuss race with an utterly unscientific caller. The discussion will touch on media literacy, climate change, evolution and mass incarceration with multimedia examples.”
Dr. Ells has served as an associate professor of Mass Communication at A&M-Texarkana since 2014. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Studies from Louisiana State University, a Master of Environmental Studies in Environmental Communication from York University in Toronto, Canada, and a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance from Dalhousie University Halifax, Canada.
A Fulbright scholar, Dr. Ells spent the spring 2015 semester teaching communication courses and conducting research in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia, at the juncture of Western Asia and Eastern Europe.
Dr. Ells’s research interests include environmental communication, media ecology and semiotics. He has published and presented cited papers on these topics.
PLACE is a faculty-led program designed to create a community of learners comprising A&M-Texarkana students, faculty, staff and the community at large. PLACE chooses an annual theme around which to organize a lecture series and other activities that provide focal points for learning and discussion. This year’s theme is “Race and Ethnicity.”
For more information, contact Dr. Michael Perri at Michael.Perri@tamut.edu or Dr. Craig Nakashian at Craig.Nakashian@tamut.edu.
