Meet Cecilia – a Student in the Communication Ph.D. Program
By Gabby Grondalski & Grace Keller
Cecilia Zhou is one of the many amazing graduate students in the Communication Ph.D. program. This is her second year and she has loved UMass, the Comm department, and the Ph.D. program thus far.
As an undergraduate, Cecelia attended Hong Kong Baptist University, where she pursued a degree in Film and TV production. While studying as an undergraduate, she found she was more interested in television shows geared towards children and adolescence. “In the beginning, I thought I would be producing, but later I found my grades in Theory courses had a higher GPA than my Production ones.” Once she realized that she had a deeper interest in theory, she began to focus on how the media affects children, particularly how they learn about the world and values.
Following her undergraduate degree, she applied to and was admitted to Syracuse University, where she pursued her Master’s in Media Studies. As she pursued her degree she discovered her interest in research and stayed in New York for a year to work on research and to decide whether or not she would pursue a Ph.D. She returned to Hong Kong for two more years to pursue more research opportunities while she applied to the Ph.D. program at UMass.
As she stepped into the department, she found that it made a very positive impression on her. “It’s very, very diverse and the professors are very, very cool.” She loves how all the professors all have different backgrounds and bring something different to the department. “My cohort and one tier above us are all international students … and I really, really enjoy that because there is no exclusive majority and we share the cultural similarities in some way … and everyone is super nice.” Since being at UMass, she has had nothing but a positive experience and feels really lucky to be at the university and a part of the community.
During her first year in the program, she completed two research projects. The first was with her advisor, Professor Erica Scharrer, where they went to primary schools to instruct 5th graders in a media literacy curriculum that focused on media and gender. Her second research project was a paper completed in her Consumer Culture class. This paper explored the fashion trend of young girls wearing ancient Chinese clothes and the aesthetic of the relevance of this clothing. “When you think about Japan or South Korea, they always have their traditional clothes like Kimonos. They have been preserved pretty well and they have been modernized to modern society pretty well. But, in China, preservation has pretty much stopped because of war and 100 years of turbulence.” Zhou focused on how people are trying to reinvigorate this tradition and to see what individuals express while wearing traditional clothing. This semester she is continuing her research on the data collected from the media literacy project as well as a project understanding Chinese parents and their concern about their adolescents’ media use.
Outside of her research, Cecelia also teaches courses within the department. Last semester she taught COMM375: Writing as Communication and is currently the instructor of a first-year seminar. “My favorite part is actually when students reach out to you and ask you questions.” She enjoys the conversations she has with the students whether they are about their academics or career path. “If there is something that I can bring to their life or understanding of certain things, I just feel that I am having some type of impact.”
Cecelia is a welcoming and bright TA and is always being asked by her students about her academic career and how she has gotten to where she is now. She is a wonderful example of what you can do with a degree in Communication, and an important part of the Communication Department. We are excited to see what she accomplishes in the future.