WYOMISSING, Pa. — Hannah Fassbender, teaching assistant and part-time employee in Thun Library, has been named the Pennsylvania Communication Association (PCA) “Voices of Tomorrow College Communicator of the Year.” She received the award at the PCA’s 80th annual convention on Sept. 28, during the banquet and awards ceremony. This year's convention was held at Penn State Berks.
The Voices of Tomorrow College Communicator of the Year Award recognizes excellent communicators at the college level. This award is presented to a Pennsylvania college student who excels in curricular and extracurricular communication (including speech or media) work, who uses communication skills in a service capacity, and who demonstrates promise of future leadership through communication.
In addition, Fassbender, along with recent graduate Xzavior Rain Sweeney, 2019, both communication arts and sciences (CAS) majors, were honored with the top student paper award at the PCA Convention. Their paper explores the messages and meanings in the discography of BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan / Bangtam Boys), to better understand their growing popularity in the United States and globally. BTS is a South Korean boy band whose lyrics focus on personal and social commentary, touching on the themes of mental health, troubles of school-age youth, loss, the journey towards loving oneself, and individualism, Specifically, their study analyzes mental health narratives, found textually and visually (words, mise-en-scene, editing) in the group’s songs and music videos. Their research paper was developed in the Penn State Berks CAS course “Advanced Theory and Research in Intercultural Communication,” taught by Cheryl L. Nicholas.
Fassbender teaches the CAS course “Introduction to Intercultural Communication” as well as an intercultural mentor.
About the Pennsylvania Communication Association
The Pennsylvania Communication Association, originally called the Speech Communication Association of Pennsylvania, was founded in 1939 to promote teaching, research, service, and development of all areas of human communication. The association recognizes its own members for their contributions to the field, as well as students and the many educational institutions in the state of Pennsylvania and beyond for their efforts in communication.
