Wooster Senior Earns Top Honor from National Communication Association

Adel El-Adawy’s paper on Obama’s 2009 speech to the Muslim world chosen as the best

WOOSTER, Ohio — A research paper by Adel El-Adawy, a senior communication studies and German language double major at The College of Wooster, has been chosen as the top entry in the National Communication Association’s (NCA) annual competition for undergraduate students who are members of Lambda Pi Eta, NCA’s communication honor society. The paper, titled “A New Partnership with the Muslim World: A Burkean Pentadic Analysis of Barack Obama’s Speech, ‘On a New Beginning’” will be presented by El-Adawy later this month (Nov. 14-17) at the NCA’s annual conference in San Francisco.

“It’s really quite an honor,” said Denise Bostdorff, professor of communication at Wooster and El-Adawy’s advisor. “He was competing against some of the nation’s top students.”

El-Adawy’s paper is based on Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt, during the summer of 2009. He tried to attend the speech, but was unable to gain access, despite the political connections of his father, an ambassador. “This reinforces the complexity of the relationship between the Muslim world and the United States,” said El-Adawy.

The paper is a revised version of his Junior Independent Study project (Wooster’s nationally acclaimed undergraduate research experience). In order to submit the paper, El-Adawy and Bostdorff had to shorten it from 49 pages to 25. “Taking out information is always very hard because you think everything you write is important,” he said, but added that Bostdorff’s guidance helped to lead him in the right direction.

El-Adawy is the president of the Wooster chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, and his Senior Independent Study project examines Obama’s address in Berlin in July 2008, as well as German media responses. He received a Copeland Fund grant to conduct additional research in Washington, D.C., where he plans to speak with Obama’s speechwriters when he travels there in December.

Written by Libby Fackler ‘13