McConnell Project launches Health Communication onto the Web

Morgantown, WV, March 14, 2006: Dr. Melanie Booth-Butterfield, Peggy Rardin McConnell Chair of Speech Communication, is facilitating healthier lifestyles across West Virginia with a website (livelongwv.com) and two new courses in Health Communication. The courses will be offered by the Department of Communication Studies in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University.

Dr. Booth-Butterfield was appointed McConnell Chair in the summer of 2006, and has created two new Health Communication courses and a website to improve health and safety behaviors. The website, livelongwv.com, was designed by Kim Clough-Thomas to focus attention on the projects, and serve as a communication center for potential partners, audiences, health professionals, and anyone else interested in participating.

The classes are designed to train communicators in how to influence healthy decisions by others, to conduct health and safety projects, and to communicate those projects’ outcomes to various audiences.

The “Advanced Health Communication” course will be offered in the Fall 2007 semester and will guide teams of students in conducting research aimed at influencing health and safety outcomes. The “Dissemination of Health Communication” course will be offered in the Spring 2008 semester and enables advanced students to organize and present health communication topics at professional conferences, civic organizations and local schools.

In 2003, John McConnell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Worthington Industries, Inc., established the Peggy Rardin McConnell Chair in Speech Communication. Peggy Rardin McConnell, his late wife, earned a degree in Speech from West Virginia University in 1946.

For more information, please visit www.livelongwv.com or contact Dr. Melanie Booth-Butterfield at mbooth@wvu.edu.

W-V-U