The Klein-Carnell Distinguished Fellow and the Klein College Rising Scholar Award were inaugurated in 2021 to honor and celebrate the outstanding research, teaching and mentoring of alumni of Klein’s Media & Communication doctoral program.
The Distinguished Fellow Award recognizes a graduate with a record of distinguished scholarship in any field relevant to communication or media, whose degree was awarded at least eight years prior to the nomination deadline for the award.
The Rising Scholar Award is given to a more recent alum whose scholarly achievements indicate promise of a major research career.
2026 Distinguished Fellow Jessica Jameson, KLN ’96
This year’s Distinguished Fellow Award, Jessica Jameson, KLN ‘96, teaches graduate seminars and undergraduate courses in organizational communication and conflict management at North Carolina State University, where she heads the Communication Department.
Her research interests include conflict in healthcare settings, the role of emotion in conflict management and workplace mediation and dispute system design. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary research project on the potential influence of mediation practice on personal health and well-being.
Her advanced textbook, Communication for Constructive Workplace Conflict (2023), received a 2023 Outstanding Textbook Award from the National Communication Association Organizational Communication Division. She also co-edited two volumes, Contemporary Trends in Conflict and Communication: Technology and Social Media (2021) and Facilitating Interdisciplinary Collaboration among the Intelligence Community, Academy, and Industry (2020). Her work has appeared in some of our field’s top journals, including the Journal of Applied Communication Research, Western Journal of Communication, International Journal of Conflict Management, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Negotiation Journal and as book chapters in several edited collections.
2026 Rising Scholar Jaehyeon Jeong, KLN ’18
The 2026 Rising Scholar, Jaehyeon Jeong, KLN ’18, is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Communication & Arts at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, where he also serves as associate chair.
He teaches courses in cultural mediation, visual communication, media and society, and transmedia storytelling. His research interests center on media industries, global communication, diaspora studies, visual communication, national identity, food studies and comics studies.
In 2020, he published a book based on his dissertation research titled Korean Food and the Korean Nation (2020). He is also the author of A Critique of Korean Cartoonist, Bongsung Park (2019, in Korean) and co-editor of Communicating Food in Korea (2021) and The Making of a Smart City in Korea: The quest for E-Seoul (2023). He has published multiple peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and online essays on such diverse topics as media globalization, media representation, cultural governance, the culture industries, diasporic identity and nationalism.
Both award recipients will be discussing their work with students and faculty at this year’s Graduate Research Forum on March 13, 2026, where they will officially receive the awards.