Dr. Pete Bsumek Recognized with Environmental Awards

Dr. Pete Bsumek, Coordinator of the Environmental Studies minor and Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies at JMU, was recently honored with the J. Robert Cox Award in Environmental Communication and Civic Engagement. The award is presented by the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association and is a means of acknowledging the substantial environmental achievements of members of the NCA - Environmental Communication Division that are performed in tandem with their work in the academy. Criteria for the award include “commitment to environmental issues through organizational leadership, service and/or activism,” and the committee, which gave him the award described his “activities and accomplishments in the realm of civic engagement to be impressive and inspiring.”

Dr. Bsumek was also honored with this year’s (2014) Chistine L. Oravec Award from the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association. The Christine L. Oravec Research Award is given for the best environmental communication article or book chapter of the year. The winning publication must “address significant scholarly questions about the relationship between communication and the environment” in a way which “demonstrates intellectual rigor” and “has the potential to influence future research in the field.” In giving the award to Pete and his co-authors, the committee praised the “timeliness and sophistication” of the chapter while noting its strong potential to inspire future research.

Full citation information for the chapter appears below. 

Bsumek, P., Schnider, J., Schwarze, S., and Peeples, J.  2014. “Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate advocacy, the coal industry, and the appropriation of voice.”  Eds.  Jennifer Peeples and Steven Depoe.  Environmental Communication and Voice.  NY: Palgrave MacMillan.