Terrell Jake Dionne, assistant professor in the Department of Communication, has been named the 2023 recipient of the Mary Lay Schuster Mentoring Award from the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium. He was honored at the symposium on Saturday, Oct. 14.  

Dionne was nominated for this award by his former students Elizabeth White, Elizabeth Berry, Holly Marr and Margot Reemtsen. White wrote to the co-chairs of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium, representing all four students, to nominate Dionne for this award.  

In this excerpt from their nomination letter, White explains the impact that Dionne had on their scholarship and future careers:

"Dr. Dionne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. He approaches health communication from the perspective of environmental communication, legal communication and rhetorical studies. He recognizes that many of his students want to be doctors or medical malpractice lawyers. He takes steps to provide students with opportunities to boost their resumes. We are evidence of his quality mentorship.  

Dr. Dionne taught us to leverage our respective skills to produce scholarship about health communication. Each of us are now pursuing various health communication focused goals. Specifically, Dr. Dionne mentored us on an award-winning research project at the intersection of health communication, legal communication and sports communication. His goal for us was to learn how to work on collaborative research projects so that we could pursue our various dreams of attending law school, medical school and graduate school. The paper was titled, "The Business of Interviewing: The HIPAA Metaphor in Sports Journalism." We presented this paper at the Central States Communication Association conference, where we won a top paper award." 

White goes on to reference additional successful research papers that Dionne has mentored, both currently and in the past. The Department of Communication extends congratulations for this recognition and appreciation for the impact Dionne has on his students and their research. We look forward to supporting their continued success.