Shanler, Borden receive top faculty awards for 2025

Amy Shanler and Lisa Borden received this year’s top faculty awards from Boston University’s College of Communication, honoring their work in instruction and advising, respectively.

Shanler, a COM professor of the practice in public relations, is the recipient of this year’s Becker Family Teacher-of-the-Year Award, considered the highest honor presented by COM to its professors. The award was established in memory of David Brudnoy, a legend in Boston broadcasting and a professor at COM.

In presenting the award during the 2025 convocation ceremony, COM Dean Mariette DiChristina said Shanler “demonstrated exceptional teaching, innovative practices and contributions to the academic community. She continuously works to improve her own teaching effectiveness and integrates cutting edge tools and technologies into her classes.”

Before coming to Boston University, Shanler was director of public and media relations for Royal Philips in North America and, earlier, directed PR strategies and community relations for the office products giant Staples. In 2020, she received the COM Dean’s Award for Alumni Initiatives and Innovation, and in 2018 won the COM Lyndon Baines Johnson Faculty Advising Award.

Recent Teacher-of-the-Year Award recipients include Adam Lapidus, assistant professor of film and television; Justin Joseph, associate professor of the practice in public relations; Noelle Graves, senior lecturer for journalism; and Gary Sheffer, the Sandra A. Frazier Professor of Public Relations.

Borden, a COM associate professor of the practice in advertising, is the recipient of this year’s Lyndon Baines Johnson Student Advising Award, nominated by COM students for excellence in student advising.

This award is made possible through a fund established at the College of Communication by Luci Baines Johnson, a friend and Trustee Emeriti of Boston University, in honor of Johnson’s father, President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Before her arrival at COM, Borden held leadership roles at leading advertising, branding and media companies including McCann Erickson, Chiat Day, FutureBrand, Hill Holliday, Arnold Worldwide and Bloomberg Media, and worked with numerous Fortune 500 clients in the US and around the world.

Recent Advising Award recipients include A. Sherrod Blakely, associate professor of the practice in journalism; Maura Smith, master lecturer for film; Steve Quigley, now professor emeritus for public relations; and Doug Gould, professor of the practice in advertising.

Following the teacher and adviser award presentations, DiChristina announced three faculty recipients of the Dean’s Award for Alumni Initiatives and Innovation, funded by her own gift to the college and selected by the Dean’ Advisory Board. The 2025 winners:

• Amml Hussein, COM civic science fellow, for her work designing COM’s civic science communication graduate certificate program;
• Steve Greenlee, COM professor in journalism, for his work launching The Newsroom, a team of COM students reporting for Boston-area local news organizations;
• Charlotte Howell, COM associate professor for film and television, for co-creating The COMversation podcast.