Howard Giles, Professor of Communication at the U of California - Santa Barbara, was selected to receive the prestigious 2006 B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award. The Award recognizes outstanding scholars, teachers, and advisors who serve as role models in those capacities and who have had a major impact on the field of communication, either through their own accomplishments or those of their former students.
"Dr. Howard Giles is one of the most influential scholars and mentors in the field of communication," said Eytan Gilboa, Chair of the Fisher Mentorship Award Committee. "He is one of the leading scholars in the world in linguistics, but has substantially contributed to other areas of communication. He is the author, co-author, editor and co-editor of no less than 19 books and numerous articles and book chapters. He has supervised 20 PhD students and has been a member of dissertation committees of 22 more PhD candidates.
"His reach is truly multidimensional, multidisciplinary and global," Gilboa added. His advisees are researching and teaching in several areas of communication including interpersonal, intercultural, organizational, and health communication. His advisees come from several countries. Many of them have already become outstanding scholars. Many testified to his outstanding personality and scholarly supervision. For these reasons, the committee wholeheartedly endorses the selection of Dr. Howard Giles for the 2007 B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award and wishes him many more years of active and fruitful scholarship and mentorship."
An ICA fellow and past president, Giles is an expert in human interaction. His research in intergroup, interpersonal, intercultural, and intergenerational communication studies has been published in numerous leading communication journals, handbooks, and book chapters. In 2000, he and Jon Nussbaum won the inaugural Scholar of the Year Award (thereafter called the Giles & Nussbaum Distinguished Scholar Award) from the Speech Communication of America's Commission on Communication and Aging. That same year, he was also the first winner of ICA's Career Productivity Award. Giles is also a fellow of the British Psychological Society.
He received the award at the ICA annual business meeting in San Francisco on Saturday, May 26, 2007.
