Education
Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2003
Professional Statement
Some years ago, two nationally reputable scholars came to perform an independent review of our program in Communication. In their review they wrote, “… if there is a better undergraduate only program in Communication, we’re not aware of it.” Growing up in Byron, Minnesota, then traveling to Florida to try to become a professional water skier, I never imagined I would become a professor, much less have the honor to try to lead such an esteemed unit. It is my pleasure to take on this new challenge and maintain the legacy of a proud program.
As of this fall (2023), 22 terrific faculty serve close to 300 majors and minors in both Communication and Journalism. We do so at a university whose faculty produces more scholarship than all the other colleges and universities in Minnesota combined, outside of our mother-ship, the UM Twin Cities. My philosophy on how we ought to best strengthen or grow as a program is to diligently and compassionately execute a “close pedagogy.” By this I mean we hope to draw students close in a variety of intellectual ways: close to our faculty, close to each other, close to the roots of their curiosity, close to scholarship – to inspecting and interrogating and even producing knowledge, and closer to a sustainable humanity that will produce profits for themselves and all of us.
Marshall McLuhan, that vexing and pithy media scholar, once said something that animates that last sentence. He said, “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” Indeed, today’s information ecology features a torrent of communication opportunities and calamities for us as human beings and democratic citizens to figure out how best to spin this giant rock into the future - even, perhaps, to ensure we have a future on it.
I invite you to browse the folks below me on this page to see what I mean about working with 22 terrific faculty. As Department Head and as Associate Professor, I aim to help guide these folks to produce a very capable crew – one student at a time.
Courses Taught
COMM 1000 - Human Communication Theory
COMM 2101 - Foundations of Mass Communication
COMM 2030 - Communication Inquiry: Social Scientific Methods
COMM 3550 - Children and Media
COMM 3555 - Mass Media Addiction
COMM 4505 - Mass Communication Theory and Research
COMM 4999 - Senior Seminar