Personal Background
Perloff, born July 28, 1951, grew up in Chicago and West Lafayette Indiana, a college town famously dubbed in the 1960s a hotbed of student rest. Perloff’s father, Robert Perloff, was a well-known psychologist and frequent, iconoclastic and active newspaper letter-writer. His mother, Evelyn Perloff, one of a handful of post-War War II female psychologists, continues to work at a behavioral measurement database service she formed.
Perloff graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan, majoring in philosophy, and writing news, features and editorials for The Michigan Daily, where he served as an editorial page editor. Rick got a Master’s in communication from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in mass communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Ohio State University, where he worked with the late Tim Brock in psychology, and with faculty in journalism and communication. He has been on the communication faculty at Cleveland State University since 1979.
Perloff was chair and founding director of the School of Communication, serving in these roles from 2003-2011 and helping shepherd the development of three communication majors and a Ph.D. track in urban communication. He has advised many undergraduate students on research projects and Master’s students on theses, and currently serves as adviser to the campus student newspaper, The Cauldron.
Perloff is married with two adult children — a civil rights attorney and a financial journalist.
Honors
Academic Honors for Scholarship
2024: Honored by receiving chaired professor position as Distinguished Professor, Cleveland State University.
2016: Excellence in Scholarship Award, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Cleveland State University
2014: University of Amsterdam School of Communication Research McQuail Award, International-Juried Award for the best article advancing communication research published in a peer review journal of the previous year
2003: Fellow, Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research
1999: Distinguished Faculty Award for Research. Cleveland State University
1995: President, Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research
1995: Head, Communication Theory & Methodology Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
1993: Dynamics of Persuasion named an Outstanding Book of 1993 by Choice.
Academic Honors for Teaching
2019: Golden Apple Teaching Award
2016: Excellence in Teaching Award, National Society of Leadership and Success, Cleveland State Chapter
Journalistic Honors
2018-2020: Best in Ohio Essay Writing, All Ohio Excellence in Journalism, Press Club of Cleveland
2009-2019: Fifteen first-place and second-place awards for essays, criticism, and feature writing, Press Club of Cleveland and Ohio Society of Professional Journalists
2019: Invitee, Letters to the Editor Dinner at The New York Times (for regular New York Times letter-writers), New York.