Dr. Lisa Farman (formerly Barnard) joined Ithaca College in 2014. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Strategic Communication and is currently serving as the acting Co-Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence.
Lisa earned her Ph.D. in Mass Communication from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she won the Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate Student Award upon graduation. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of media effects, advertising, and technology, and her dissertation focused on behaviorally targeted ads on Facebook.
Before earning her Ph.D., Lisa worked in the advertising industry in NYC. Her most recent position was at tech startup Smiley360, where she executed social media and influencer campaigns for popular consumer brands such as Country Crock, Schick, Staples, and Florida's Natural Orange Juice. Prior to that, she worked at Ogilvy & Mather as an account supervisor on the IBM worldwide team, where she led advertising and direct marketing campaigns, managed clients and teams across five continents, and contributed to the development of the Effie Award-winning "Smarter Planet" campaign. She also worked at Market Maker Interactive, a web design agency, as a web copy writer and client manager for both consumer and business-to-business brands. Some of her favorites include Cosmopolitan, Parents, Fitness, and Better Homes and Gardens magazines.
Lisa's research has been published in the International Journal of Communication, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media (twice), Entertainment Computing, The Journal of Psychology, and the Atlantic Journal of Communication (twice). She has presented her research at national and international conferences, where she received four top paper awards and two travel grants to present her work. Lisa's research has been discussed in publications such as The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Wired, Racked, Slate, and Business.com, and her research was featured on The Measure of Everyday Life podcast. Lisa also contributed an invited essay to the Journal of Advertising Education and has a forthcoming book chapter in Teaching Communication, Volume III: Media and Journalism.
Lisa is currently the Acting Co-Director of the Ithaca College Center for Faculty Excellence (as a sabbatical replacement for the Director of Engaged Learning) and also serves as a Dana Teaching Fellow. Teaching Fellows are "faculty members who have profoundly influenced our students through their sustained and significant contributions to pedagogy and scholarship." Lisa was also part of the inaugural cohort of the Antiracism Institute at the IC Center for Faculty Excellence. She earned the Teaching & Learning in a Diverse Classroom certification from Cornell University in April 2020.
She is the recipient of several other teaching awards, including the national 2021 Teaching Ideas award from the Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (which "recognizes innovation and excellence in teaching in the field of mass communication"), and the 2021 Pendleton Pivot For Teaching Excellence award from the Roy H. Park School of Communications (honoring "outstanding, innovative, and impactful contributions to online/ hybrid teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic"). Her submission to the 2023 AEJMC Best Practices in Teaching competition (which "supports and amplifies excellence in teaching") was also selected to be showcased as a top submission at the national conference.
Lisa is originally from Endicott, N.Y. In addition to earning her Ph.D. from UNC, where she was a Roy H. Park fellow, Lisa also earned a B.A. in Journalism & Mass Communications from St. Bonaventure University, and an M.A. in Arts Journalism from Syracuse University. She is a member of the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC), and the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR). In 2019, she was inducted into the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi for excellence in academic scholarship and currently serves as President of the Ithaca College chapter of Phi Kappa Phi. She also serves as the faculty advisor for communication honor society Lambda Pi Eta.
Courses taught at IC: Research & Statistics for Strategic Communication (STCM 28800); Media Planning (STCM 30900); Strategic Planning for Advertising Campaigns (STCM 38800); Integrated Marketing Communications Lab (STCM 42000); Character: Developing Habits for Good (ICIC 14000).