Dr. Mia Moody-Ramirez Recognized with Cornelia Marschall Smith Award & Creates New Scholarship with Funds from Award
By Chloe Floyd, Communication Student
"Organizational change is necessary for entities to succeed," said Mia Moody-Ramirez, Ph.D., the 2021 recipient of The Cornelia Marschall Smith Award, during her keynote speech titled "Organizational Change in an Age of Covid-19 and Social Unrest."
The speech was given in February by Dr. Moody-Ramirez, who is professor and chair of the Baylor University Department of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media.
The Cornelia Marschall Smith Award is presented annually to a Baylor faculty member who makes a superlative contribution to the learning environment at Baylor.
The criteria include teaching, which is judged to be of the highest order of intellectual acumen and pedagogical effectiveness; research, which is recognized as outstanding by the national and international, as well as local, community of scholars, and service, which is regarded as exemplary in building the character of intellectual community at Baylor.
"I am grateful that my colleagues nominated me for this prestigious award,” Dr. Moody-Ramirez said. “As we deal with social injustices and the pandemic, this was a monumental year to receive the award.”
Along with the award, she also received $20,000 in cash, all of which she gave back to the university to establish a new scholarship titled the “Moody-Ramirez Belden Endowed Scholarship for Diversity in Journalism.
This scholarship is a collaborative effort between Tom Belden and Janice Miller, Ella Prichard and Mia Moody-Ramirez that they began discussing with Bob Darden in the fall of 2020. They wanted to create a scholarship for journalism students similar to Baylor’s Trailblazer Scholars Program, a scholarship designed to recognize the importance of fostering diversity and mutual respect at Baylor University.
Students who are members of the National Association of Black Journalists are eligible to apply for the scholarship. Dr. Moody-Ramirez serves as the faculty adviser for NABJ.
Dr. Moody-Ramirez’s research focuses on media framing of minorities, women, and political candidates, the advantages and disadvantages of social media in political campaigns and she has examined how historical stereotypes are found in social media platforms.
"Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith was a true trailblazer and a role model for women. It is a privilege to follow in her footsteps, to serve as chair of the department of journalism, public relations and new media and to join the ranks of other professors. I am looking forward to continuing to give back to the Baylor community," she said.
As recipients of this prestigious award, faculty also present a talk on a topic of their choice to an audience.
"Dr. Moody-Ramirez's fascinating Cornelia Marschall Smith Award lecture was a timely reminder to us all that in times of great change and turmoil that the Academy must be the source of solutions -- and that can only happen if colleges and universities themselves are able to swiftly and effectively adapt to the stark and sometimes forbidding new realities of widespread anti-intellectualism, sweeping worldwide pandemics and the technological tsunamis that have continually washed over us in recent years,” said Robert Darden, Professor of Journalism, and Public Relations and New Media, and a mentor of Dr. Moody. “Watching her presentation, I felt -- once again! -- blessed to work with someone who offers such carefully articulated, researched, and implemented solutions."
Members of NABJ are grateful for Dr. Moody-Ramirez’s generosity in establishing this new scholarship.
“I would say it’s very selfless for Dr. Moody-Ramirez and her husband to donate their award money from the school to NABJ. We’re a very small organization, especially here at Baylor being a PWI (predominately white institution),” said Madison Walkes, the president of NABJ. “It’s very awesome, and it’s going to be a big deal for our chapter.”
Selection committee chair and Vice Provost James Bennighof, Ph.D., said Dr. Moody-Ramirez has achieved tremendous recognition from students and departmental peers in her teaching, research and service, which related to one another in a new and different way.
"I think it might be most revealing for us to observe how clearly Dr. Moody-Ramirez has been engaged in service through research and teaching," he said. "Perhaps of greatest note, our honoree’s research and writing have been very directly and overtly oriented toward clarifying for all of us issues and situations that strike at the very core of our relationships with one another. She has written or co-written four books and about 30 articles, with the most distinctive element of the work addressing the ways that race is and has been depicted for widespread audiences in the media. All of this should make clear how the excellent work of Dr. Moody-Ramirez is obviously and crucially relevant to issues that stare all of us in the face on a daily basis, and thus provide an incalculable service."
About Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith
The Cornelia Marschall Smith Professor of the Year honor was inaugurated in 2004 by the Office of the Provost and is named for Cornelia Marschall Smith, Ph.D., a 1918 Baylor biology graduate who earned a master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1925 and her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1928. She was a professor of biology at Baylor from 1940 to 1967, chair of the biology department from 1943 to 1967 and director of Strecker Museum from 1943 to 1967. She retired in 1967 but maintained an office in Armstrong Browning Library to assist charitable causes. In 1980, Baylor honored Smith with an endowed chair known as The Cornelia Marschall Smith Professorship in Biology. She was celebrated among her colleagues, students and alumni for fine teaching, generous mentoring and her many interdisciplinary interests. She was a lively and continuing contributor to the Baylor intellectual community until her death on Aug. 27, 1997, at age 101.
Past recipients of the award are D. Thomas Hanks (2004, English), Robert M. Baird (2005, Philosophy), Kevin Pinney (2006, Chemistry), Ann Rushing (2007, Biology), Wallace L. Daniel (2008, History), William D. Hillis (2009, Biology), Joyce Jones (2010, Music), Robert F. Darden (2011, Journalism), Roger E. Kirk (2012, Psychology and Neuroscience), William H. Bellinger Jr. (2013, Religion), Joseph A. McKinney (2014, Economics), David L. Jeffrey (2015, Great Texts); Johnny L. Henderson (2016, Mathematics), Alden Smith (2017, Classics), C. Stephen Evans (2018, Philosophy and Humanities), Gaynor I. Yancey (2019, Social Work) and Andrea Dixon (2020, Marketing).