Bissell Named Associate Dean at UA’s C&IS, Director of ICIR

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Kim Bissell has been named director of the Institute for Communication and Information Research and associate dean for research in The University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences.

Bissell served as interim director of the ICIR for six months prior to this permanent appointment.

“She has done an outstanding job over the last six months, and I am looking forward to her continuing contributions in this role,” said Dr. Loy Singleton, dean of the College. “She has the vision, experience and energy to take the ICIR to the next level.”

During her interim tenure, she developed the Child Media Lab, designed for use in studies of health and fitness, media effects and video games. Two high-definition television sets equipped with different gaming systems let researchers study media effects on children in a friendly and conducive environment.

The Child Media Lab can also be used to measure physiological data such as heart rate and skin conductance in studies designed to measure energy expenditure while playing exercise video games.

Bissell’s research examines the social effects of mass media as it relates to body image distortion in women and adolescent girls and further examines the role of media and cognition in the development of negative attitudes about weight stigmatization.

Bissell will continue teaching undergraduate courses in magazine design, magazine production and photojournalism and graduate courses in research methods, mass communication theory, health communication and media effects. She is teaching a magazine production class that will travel to Germany and Austria and produce a multimedia magazine.

Bissell serves as the sequence coordinator for undergraduate students in visual journalism. She has received the College’s Board of Visitors Teaching Excellence Award and the Kappa Tau Alpha Commitment to Teaching Award. She has also won several awards for research from AEJMC, including the 2009 Krieghbaum Under-40 Award.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism at the University of Florida in 1991, she obtained a master’s degree in social science from Binghamton University in 1996 and a doctorate in mass communication from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University in 1999.