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The Graduate School has awarded the 2022 Outstanding Thesis Award to Letícia Silva Pires.

The Outstanding Thesis Award is an award established by the Graduate School to recognize exceptional work by master’s students and to encourage the highest levels of scholarship, research, and writing. Winners are selected on a rotating basis from two of the four fields of competition—mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering; humanities and fine arts; social sciences, business, and education; and life sciences.

Pires received her M.S. in Communication in May 2021. Her thesis, “A Framing Analysis of the Amazon Rainforest Fire in 2019 by American and Brazilian Newspapers,” examines the differing news coverage of the environmental disaster.

Exploring the Wider Impact

“Known as the ‘lungs of the planet,’ the Amazon rainforest has a global importance due to the influence that this rainforest has in the environment,” Pires says.

After coming to the U.S. from her native Brazil, Pires realized that “most Brazilians are used to hearing news regarding the fires that happen in the Amazon rainforest every year. However, when I came to ��˾�������� to start my master’s degree, the coverage of the Amazon fires in 2019 stood out to me as the news seemed to be different from what we saw in Brazil.”

Pires was intrigued, and decided to learn more.

Dr. Stephenson Waters, assistant professor of communication and Pires’ thesis committee chair, notes that this research “provides a quantitative content analysis of news content, focusing on an area of significant interest to journalism studies.”

“I believe her work fills an important gap in our understanding of framing theory and will make for a notable publication in the very near future,” he says.

While completing her thesis, Pires participated in the Graduate School’s 2020-2021 Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition. Her presentation of this research won third place in the campus-wide event.

She was also the recipient of the Department of Communication’s Outstanding Graduate Thesis/Project Award and the Brad Wedlock Communication Scholarship.

“Ms. Pires’ dedication to research, her clarity of conceptual thinking, and her academic rigor have made her work an excellent model of communication science,” Waters says.

Connecting with Community

Pires decided to pursue a master’s degree in the United States after completing her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas.

“When looking for different programs around the United States, the program at UL ��˾�������� stood out to me due to the curriculum of the course, the affordability of the program, and most of all, because of the professors that I had the chance to speak with before making my decision to apply at UL ��˾��������,” she says.

“The welcoming environment from all the professors and the recruiting members was definitely a strong factor when selecting the master’s degree program.”

During her time at UL ��˾��������, Pires became involved with the International Student Council (ISC) and was a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Communication.

Since graduating, she has been volunteering at the Rotaract Club of ��˾��������, which works with UL ��˾�������� students to help community members in need, while pursuing permanent residency in the U.S.

As she looks ahead to her future career plans, Pires notes that “the experiences I had at UL ��˾�������� helped me shape my interests and career goals. It gave me a glimpse of the world of education with the aspect of teaching, which is something I have always wanted to do.”

“Connecting with professors, staff members, and peers allowed me to be a part of a creative community, helping me better understand the opportunities that are ahead of me.”