Life Sciences Communication

Professor and Department Chair

	Office: 201 Hiram Smith Hall Phone: 608.262.0184 Email: jhitchon@wisc.edu
	Background | Teaching | Publications | Education

Background

I am a professor in, and serve as chair of, the Department of Life Sciences Communication. As chair, it is my responsibility to facilitate the professional lives of the department’s faculty and staff, and to ensure that we provide the highest quality educational experience for our students. As the department’s first female chairperson, I am especially conscious of the need to enhance diversity in our intellectual community. I am truly proud to serve this department, which I have found to be one of the most supportive, dedicated and creative on campus. Click on the history bar on this web page because LSC was the first department of Agricultural Journalism in the country and we strive to continue our legacy of leadership on many fronts.

How did I come to serve in this role? I have always been fascinated by language as a form of communication and have loved to travel since a child. After studying languages and literature at Oxford in England, I sought a professional arena in which I could apply my love of language and my understanding of its uses in recounting, informing, and persuading. An MBA in marketing from the University of Wisconsin- Madison afforded me a broad base in business studies, together with specialized insight into marketing communication. I became absorbed by questions concerning the social impact of advertising, together with the practical issues involved in designing messages to maximize impact on audience recall and attitudes. Completing a PhD in marketing from UW-Madison enabled me to develop a research program to explore the questions that interested me.

My work has been published in such major journals of communication as Communication Theory, Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Human Communication Research, Political Communication, and in other scholarly publications. My recent research has focused on two concerns. First, in the area of health communication, I have explored the relationship between exposure to marketing communication and the development of disordered eating. Second, I have studied the effect of incorporating social causes in brand advertising, a form of communication termed cause-related marketing or CRM.