Beginning in the fall 2004 semester, Dr. Sang”Sammy”Lee will become an assistant advertising professor at the P.I. Reed School of Journalism at West Virginia University.
“We welcome Professor Sammy Lee. His expertise, research agenda and educational perspective will add a much needed new dimension to the school,”said Acting Dean Maryanne Reed.
Lee most recently taught two upper-level advertising courses in the College of Communications at Penn State University. He is a graduate of Chung Ang University in Seoul, Korea, and received a master’s in advertising from Michigan State University. He will receive his doctorate in early August.
“I am tremendously excited to join the faculty in the P.I. Reed School of Journalism because I know I will be working with great professors and talented students,”Lee said.”I am looking forward to contributing to the school of journalism as well as the surrounding community.”
Dr. Lee has been instructing since spring 2000 and received the Dean’s Excellence Award for Graduate Student Teaching in May 2003. Lee has become a full-time lecturer in the college of communications at Penn State University since August 2003.
His professional experience includes work with Cheil Communications Inc., in Seoul, Korea, CCAI in Los Angeles and Samsung Electronics America.
In his time at Cheil Communications, one of the 20 largest advertising agencies in the world, Lee worked as an account executive and was involved with group consumer products. He became senior manager there in 1998.
“I think I was fortunate enough to have various unique experiences as an advertising person. These experiences have been very helpful in teaching advertising courses over the last several years. I am looking forward to sharing my experience with students in the school of journalism,”he said.
While working as the manager of advertising and marketing communications planning for Samsung, Lee planned and implemented an annual budget of $40 to $70 million for the company. He was also involved in the negotiating and reviewing of a multi-million dollar strategic alliance with AOL .
Lee’s research areas include internet media effects, web advertising and advertising regulation. In one study, he worked with the founding director of Penn State’s Media Effects Research Laboratory. The study examined how the frequency and clutter of banner ads on the Web influenced users’thoughts and attitudes about advertising and brands. This study was the first to address the role of frequency and clutter in the internet advertising environment.
The university awarded Lee a research grant in 2002 to complete a study on the effectiveness of banner ads and internet users’tendency to avoid them. The project was termed”Banner Blindness,”and Lee’s main goal was to find a way to combat the problem for advertisers by finding out what makes an ad more appealing to consumers.