New faculty spotlight: Nate Evans

Nate Evans

Nate Evans, a doctoral candidate in the School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, will be joining the Grady faculty this fall as an assistant professor of advertising.

What classes (if any) are you teaching this year? I am currently teaching an Advertising Principles class at the University of Tennessee and am scheduled to teach Advertising and Society at UGA in the fall. 

Past academic positions/awards: My past academic positions have been teaching assistant/teaching associate/ and instructor of record. Here are the awards I have received:
- AAA Doctoral Dissertation Grant Competition: Funded by the American Academy of Advertising (AAA) 
- Top Student Paper: Advertising Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)

- Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award: Best Student Paper, Advertising Division (AEJMC)

- Competitive Student Travel Grant Award: Funded by AEJMC

- ESPN's Research Funding Award

What are your research interests and why?  My program of research focuses on the theoretical and policy implications of interactive and embedded advertising formats. Specifically, my research concentrates on three main areas: 1) parents and children's advergames, including parents' perceptions, understanding, attitudes, and persuasion recognition in children's advergaming formats; 2) social media, in-game advertising (IGA), and massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), which include applications of interpersonal communication theory, schema theory, and associative learning; and 3) larger societal and macro-focused implications of advertising communication, including an emphasis on children's international online advertising regulation.  

Are there any projects/publications you're working on that you can share a little about at this time? I was recently working on a piece that will be published in the next issue of the Journal of Advertising. This article examined parents attitudes and perceptions of children's advergaming using Parental Socialization theory. Co-Authors were Dr. Les Carlson (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and Dr. Mariea Grubbs Hoy (University of Tennessee). Currently I am working on my dissertation, which tests the influence of advertising disclosures and cognitive load on parents' ability to recognize children's advergames as advertising. In addition to my dissertation I am also working on other manuscripts that focus on a re-conceptualization of the persuasion knowledge model, children's international online advertising regulation, and have future plans to study branded apps for children on tablets and mobile devices.  

 What are you most looking forward to while you're at Grady/UGA? Perhaps what I am most looking forward to at Grady is working along side some of the most productive and prolific scholars in the field advertising scholarship. I am also looking forward to working with, what I understand to be, some of the most motivated and gifted graduate students. Furthermore, my fiance Taylor Krcek and I recently purchased a house outside Athens in Danielsville. We are excited to begin our lives together as UGA Bulldogs (Formerly I was a Vol and she a Buckeye).