New Faculty and Staff

NEW FACES IN MURPHY HALL

MARÍA E. LEN-RÍOS

Dr. María E. Len-Ríos (Ph.D., Missouri) joins the Hubbard School as professor and associate director after serving as the associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of public relations at the College of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. She conducts research in the areas of public relations, health, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2016 she co-edited the text Cross-cultural Journalism: Communicating Strategically about Diversity, which was updated and republished in 2019/20 under the title Cross-cultural Journalism and Strategic Communication: Storytelling and Diversity (Routledge). She has won more than 10 top paper awards at regional, national, and international academic conferences, published numerous journal articles with colleagues, and has served in various roles on large and small grant projects. She is a member of Page Up, a member organization of senior corporate communications leaders. She is an editorial board member of Public Relations Review, the Journal of Public Relations Research, the International Journal of Strategic Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and the Howard Journal of Communications. Additionally, she is a board-member-at-large and co-Chair of the IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access) Standing Committee of the International Communication Association.

HASEON PARK

Haseon Park joins the Hubbard School as an assistant professor in strategic communication. Park comes from the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. Her research interests primarily focus on examining consumer-brand relationship building on emerging media platforms and interactive advertising effectiveness by incorporating various quantitative methodologies such as surveys and experiments, computational analyses including data mining, computerized textual analyses, and social network analyses. Her work has been featured in the International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Marketing Communications, International Journal of Mobile Communications, and Cyberpsychology.

ALVIN ZHOU

Alvin Zhou joins the Hubbard School as an assistant professor in strategic communication. At the intersection of computational social science and strategic communication, Zhou’s research focuses on advertising, public relations, audience analytics, and the various ways digital technologies (e.g., AI, platform design, mobile access, behavioral trace) are changing their industry practices and social implications. During his graduate study, he received six top paper awards from the International and National Communication Associations and published more than 10 articles in journals across communication subfields such as Social Media + Society, Journal of Communication, Computers in Human Behavior, and Journal of Public Relations Research. He is moving to the Twin Cities from Philly after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a Ph.D. in Communication at the Annenberg School and an M.A. in Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School. Previously, he finished an M.A. in Strategic Public Relations at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School. At the Hubbard School, he is excited to teach courses on computational social science and digital media, and mentor students who will use insights from data analytics to inform their journalistic and strategic work. Zhou previously worked as an investigative journalist, a news anchor, and a public relations specialist in the industry.

DON ALLEN

Don Allen joins the Hubbard School as a teaching specialist for strategic writing for communications and media in a changing world. Prior to his appointment, Allen worked in corporate America for more than 20 years in internet marketing, public relations, and media. In 2015, he became a high school English teacher specializing in university courses, in introduction to teaching, public speaking, journalism, writing and rhetoric, and life sciences. Allen earned his undergraduate degree, Master of Arts in Teaching, and Master of Arts in Education at Hamline University, and was a new-teacher mentor for Hamline University’s School of Education. Today, he is earning his Superintendent Licensure at Hamline University. Allen is the co-founder of the ad-free/income-free online news platform the Independent Business News Network, which