Executive Committee
David T. McMahan
Missouri Western State University
David T. McMahan is a Professor of Communication at Missouri Western State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 2001, with research focusing on the social aspects of media and technology, personal relationships, and rhetorical criticism. He has published over ten books, including Internet Communication, Introduction to Communication Criticism, Relational Communication, The Basics of Communication, and the bestselling Communication in Everyday Life series. His research and other works have been published in numerous academic journals and anthologies, and he was named a Centennial Scholar by the Eastern Communication Association. His extensive record of service includes President of the Central States Communication Association, Editor of the Iowa Journal of Communication, and Consulting Editor of the Journal of Communication Pedagogy, along with membership and activity on a vast number of academic committees, executive boards, and editorial boards. He has taught courses which span the discipline of communication and has received several awards for his work in the classroom.
✉ Email: mcmahan@missouriwestern.edu
Roseann M. Mandziuk
Texas State University
Roseann M. Mandziuk is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Communication Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Rhetorical Studies from the University of Iowa, her M.S. in Communication from Illinois State University, and her B.A. in Speech and in English from Wayne State University. She has been a member of the faculty at Texas State University since 1987.
Roseann’s research focuses upon images of women, the rhetorical uses of history, and the construction of public memory in museums and monuments. She has co-authored a scholarly book about the rhetoric of Sojourner Truth, published numerous articles and book chapters examining historical and contemporary rhetoric, and served as Editor of Women’s Studies in Communication. She has received two Fulbright Scholar Awards, in India and in Poland, and has presented numerous international research lectures. She also was selected as an American Council on Education Fellow.
Roseann’s extensive professional service contributions include President of the Southern States Communication Association, two terms as Finance Board Chair and twelve years as a member of the Affirmative Action/Intercaucus Committee for the National Communication Association, and fifteen years as Chair of the Presidential Work Life Advisory Council on her campus. She has served on numerous editorial boards including Quarterly Journal of Speech and Women’s Studies in Communication, as well as regional and national association publication, nomination, and award committees. Her contributions have been recognized with national and regional professional association awards for teaching, mentoring, and research, including the 2014 Michael M. Osborn Teacher-Scholar Award from SSCA and the 2017 Francine Merritt Award for Contributions to Women in Communication from the NCA Women’s Caucus.
✉ Email: rm07@txstate.edu
Walid Afifi
University of California-Santa Barbara
Walid Afifi (PhD, University of Arizona, 1995) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB), where is also currently a member of the Campus Climate Council and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies. Prior to his return to UCSB, he served as department Chair at the University of Iowa (2012-2015), where he was also a member of the Human Rights Commission. He is an author on over 80 journal articles, chapters, or books, and was recently inducted as a Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA). His service to NCA has been vast and long-lasting, including Chair of the Interpersonal Communication division (2004), and a member of the Units Task Force (2009-2011), the NCA Bylaws Task Force (2011-2012), and the Task Force on Inclusivity in the Discipline (2014-2017). Most recently, he was Chair of the Task force on the NCA Center for Community, Collaboration and Change (2017-2019). He is an editorial board member on several leading journals and served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Personal Relationships, and Human Communication Research. He is also currently serving the discipline as a member of the ICA Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Access committee.
✉ Email: w-afifi@ucsb.edu
Kent Ono
University of Utah
Kent A. Ono is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. His research focuses on media representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation. Professor Ono has made significant contributions to rhetoric and communication theory in three primary areas: critical rhetoric, race and colonialism, and rhetoric and media. His groundbreaking work with John Sloop (Vanderbilt University) in the highly popular area of critical rhetoric has helped change the field of rhetorical studies. Additionally, he has been a scholarly leader of research on race and colonialism in the field of communication, with the best example of this being his book, Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past (2009, Peter Lang), which studies the rhetoric of colonialism in the United States and has been translated into Chinese (Tsinghua University Press). Professor Ono has also contributed to research in rhetoric and media, where his work on television shows such as Mad Men, Star Trek, and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, for example, and his work on films such as Pocahontas, Avatar, and Come See the Paradise, have had a significant impact on critical media research. He is past editor of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies and Critical Studies in Media Communication (with Ron Jackson). He is also the founding editor of the book series, Critical Cultural Communication, at New York University Press (which he edited with Sarah Banet-Weiser).
✉ Email: Kent.Ono@utah.edu
Rachel Alicia Griffin
University of Utah
Rachel Alicia Griffin, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Race and Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. As a critical/cultural scholar her research interests span Black feminist thought, critical race theory, sexual violence, and the social institutions of sport, media, education, and the U.S. presidency. From 2012 to 2015 Dr. Griffin was awarded the Judge William Holmes Cook Professorship by the Office of the Associate Chancellor for Institutional Diversity at SIU and in 2013 she was awarded the College of Liberal Arts Early Career Faculty Excellence Award at SIU. She was also awarded the 2015 Scholar-Activist Award by the Critical Cultural Studies Division and the 2015 Rex Crawley Outstanding Service Award by the African American Communication Division and Black Caucus via the National Communication Association. Most recently, Dr. Griffin earned WSCA’s 2018 Exemplary Teacher Award and a 2018-2019 Tanner Humanities Center Fellowship at the University of Utah. Dr. Griffin has also published in several journals including Women’s Studies in Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, The Howard Journal of Communications, the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and Communication, Culture, & Critique.
Additionally, she is the co-editor of Adventures in Shondaland: Identity Politics and the Power of Representation (Rutgers University Press, 2018). Her pending research project is a co-authored monograph titled Marginalization and the Modern Presidency: Presidential Communication, Identity Politics, and the Battle for “Real’ America. Exceptionally committed to sustaining synergy between research and service, Dr. Griffin has delivered well over 100 anti-sexual violence and Inclusive Excellence presentations on campuses and at conferences nationally and internationally. She especially prizes having spoken for U.S. state coalitions against sexual violence in North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Maryland, California, Illinois, and Washington alongside several opportunities to advocate against sexual violence in Canada.
✉ Email: Rachel.a.griffin@utah.edu
Kevin Barge
Texas A&M University
Kevin Barge (Ph.D., University of Kansas, 1985) is Professor and Head of Communication at Texas A & M University and an Associate with the Taos Institute. He is also a member of the planning team for the Aspen Conference, a community of engaged organizational communication scholars focused on developing practical theory and collaborative research that bridge academic-practitioner interests.
Kevin’s major research interests center on developing a social constructionist approach to leadership, articulating the connections between appreciative practice and organizational change, as well as exploring the relationship between discourse and public deliberation, specifically practices that facilitate communities working through polarized and polarizing issues. Other research interests include investigating the role of reflexivity in leadership and management practice, examining ways to develop effective academic-practitioner collaborations, and developing practical theory.
He has published articles on leadership, dialogue, and organizational change in The Academy of Management Review, Management Communication Quarterly, Human Relations, Communication Theory, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and Communication Monographs. Kevin has served on a number of national and international editorial boards for journals such as Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Human Relations, and Journal of Management Studies. He is a former editor of Communication Studies and a former president of the Central States Communication Association.
✉ Email: kbarge@tamu.edu
Charles Morris III
Syracuse University
Charles E. Morris III is Professor and Chairperson in the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, and Affiliated Faculty in LGBT Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies, at Syracuse University. He earned his B.A. at Boston College and his M.A. and Ph.D from Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Morris describes himself as a queer rhetorical/historical critic whose research and teaching interests are focused on rhetorical criticism, archives and public memory, and LGBTQ histories, cultures, and politics. Dr. Morris is Co-Founding-Editor-in-Chief of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (Michigan State University Press). His edited and co-edited books include An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk's Speeches and Writings, Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse, Remembering the AIDS Quilt, and Readings on the Rhetoric of Social Protest. His essays and guest edited special issues and forums have appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, Text & Performance Quarterly, and Women’s Studies in Communication among others.
Dr. Morris has twice received NCA’s Golden Monograph Award for article of the year, as well as NCA's Karl Wallace Memorial Award for early career achievement and the Randy Majors Award for Distinguished Scholarship in LGBTQ Studies. In 2016, Dr. Morris was named a Distinguished Scholar by the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division of the National Communication Association.
✉ Email: cemorris@syr.edu
Vinita Agarwal
Salisbury University
Vinita Agarwal is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Salisbury University (SU), Maryland. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University, M.A. from University of Illinois at Chicago, M.A. from the Mass Communication Research Center, India, and her B.Sc. in Physics (Hons.) from Miranda House, India.
Dr. Agarwal’s research theorizes ecologically aware, relational, and dialogic understandings of whole-person care in health promotion, disease prevention, and chronic illness management. Her monograph, Medical Humanism, Chronic Illness, and the Body in Pain: An Ecology of Wholeness (Lexington Press), integrates her long-term meditation practice, native knowledge, and professional training in Vipassana meditation and Ayurvedic diet and wellness principles to propose an ecological model of wholeness for the therapeutic relationship and healing communication approaches of traditional global medical systems and the biomedical model.
Her research has been published in journals such as Health Communication, the Journal of Patient Experience, Qualitative Health Research, Journal of Advanced Nursing, and the Journal of American College Health. She is associate editor at Frontiers in Communication (Health Communication) and has received top paper recognition from the Applied Communication Division, NCA and at the Eastern and Central regional conventions. Her work has been recognized by the Excellence in Scholarship award, the Building Research Excellence grant (SU), and the University System of Maryland Women’s Foundation Faculty Research award. Her commitment to service includes positions such as director for the foundational year of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities and as chair of the Feminist and Gender Studies division, NCA.
✉ Email: vinita13@gmail.com
Jeanetta D. Sims
University of Central Oklahoma
Dr. Jeanetta D. Sims is Dean of the Jackson College of Graduate Studies and Professor in the marketing department of the College of Business at UCO, where she teaches courses in marketing and communication, and is accredited in public relations (APR). Her program of research includes strategic communication, workforce diversity, and persuasion and social influence. She founded Diverse Student Scholars (www.diversestudentscholars.com), which is a robust interdisciplinary program of student research engagement in existence since 2007.
Dr. Sims has received university and national awards for her teaching (in 2014, 2012, and 2009) and for her scholarship through winning top paper or merit awards from the university or at national and international conferences in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2006; three of the top paper awards included undergraduate student co-authors. She is co-editor of the annual UCO Transformative Learning Conference Proceedings, the Journal of Transformative Learning, and Developing Workforce Diversity Programs, Curriculum, and Degrees in Higher Education. Her research appears in multiple book chapters as well as in the Journal of Communication, Journal of Public Relations Research, Human Communication Research, Atlantic Marketing Journal, Corporate Reputation Review, Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Western Journal of Communication, Journal of Business Diversity, Florida Communication Journal, and Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly.
Dr. Sims serves nationally in elected or appointed positions for the Higher Learning Commission, the Council on Undergraduate Research, the National Communication Association, the Marketing Management Association, and the North American Management Society.
✉ Email: jsims7@uco.edu
Lisa A. Flores
University of Colorado, Boulder
Lisa A. Flores is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado. Her research and teaching interests lie in rhetoric, critical race studies, and gender/queer studies. Her most recent work examines historic narratives of immigrants and immigration, mapping an argument of race making, particular at the intersections of nation, citizenship, and labor. Her book, Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of “Illegality,” forthcoming from the Pennsylvania State University Press, theorizes rhetorical racialization as it turns to the intersecting discourses of deportability and disposability in historic narratives of Mexican migration. She is the recipient of the Douglas W. Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award from the National Communication Association (NCA), as well as the Distinguished Scholar Award from both the Rhetorical & Communication Theory Division of NCA and the Critical & Cultural Studies Division of NCA. She has twice received the Rose B. Johnson article of the year award from the Southern States Communication Association. In addition, she is also the recipient of the Latino/a Scholar of the year award from NCA’s Latina/Latino Communication Studies Division, the Young Scholar Activist Award from the same division, the New Investigator Award from NCA’s Rhetoric and Communication Theory Division, and the Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award, from NCA. She has published in Text and Performance Quarterly, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and the Quarterly Journal of Speech. An advocate of disciplinary service, Lisa is Past President of the Western States Communication Association and the Organization for Research on Women and Communication, a member of the Board of Directors of the Rhetoric Society of America, and an active member the National Communication Association.
✉ Email: lisa.flores@colorado.edu
Rich West
Emerson College
Rich received his Ph.D. in Interpersonal Communication from Ohio University and his M.A. in Communication Education from Illinois State University. He is currently Professor of Communication Studies at Emerson College, where he has served as a Dean, Director, and Department Chair.
Rich is a former President of both the National Communication Association and the Eastern Communication Association. He has chaired or served on over 60 NCA/ECA committees. He is also a recipient of ECA's Distinguished Service Award as well as being recognized as both an ECA Distinguished Research Fellow and Distinguished Teaching Fellow. Rich is currently on the Academic Board of Directors for the Global Listening Centre, based in London, and sits on several editorial boards.
Rich is the co-author/editor of 10 books that have been published in 7 languages. Two of his anthologies have received NCA's Outstanding Book Award in Family Communication ("The Family Communication Sourcebook") and in Applied Communication ("Routledge Handbook of Communication and Bullying")
Rich has received a number of accolades over the years. He was awarded Emerson's prestigious Norman and Irma Mann Stearns distinction and recognized as Distinguished Faculty. In addition, Illinois State University and Ohio University named him "Outstanding Alum in Communication"; ISU also recognized him for "Distinction in Forensics" and "Outstanding Graduate in Teacher Education."
Rich is an award-winning gardener and his 120-year-old home in Maine has been featured in dozens of media outlets.
✉ Email: richard_west@emerson.edu
Executive Director
National Communication Association
Trevor Parry-Giles graduated from Ripon College and holds an M.A. from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. In addition to his NCA position, he is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland; he taught previously at St. Ambrose University and at Western Illinois University.
Dr. Parry-Giles's research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary relationships between rhetoric, politics, law, and popular culture. He is the award-winning author or editor of four books and his research has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Celebrity Studies, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, the Journal of Communication, and elsewhere.
Dr. Parry-Giles is a Distinguished Research Fellow and a Distinguished Teaching Fellow of the Eastern Communication Association. In 2019, Parry-Giles received the University of Maryland's Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year Award.
Dr. Parry-Giles tweets @trevorpg; ✉ Email: tparrygiles@natcom.org
Executive Committee meeting minutes (click to expand)
Legislative Assembly
Councils and Committees
IDEA Council
- James Cherney, University of Nevada, Reno (Disability Issues Caucus)
- Jaime Guzmán, California State University, Los Angeles (La Raza Caucus)
- Deryl Johnson, Kutztown University (Black Caucus)
- Ashley Noel Mack, Louisiana State University (Women's Caucus)
- Elizabeth Parks, Colorado State University (Asain/Pacific American Caucus)
Finance Committee
- Lisa Flores, University of Colorado, Boulder
- Rich West, Emerson College
Publications Council
- Nicholas Bowman, Texas Tech University
- Jeffrey Child, Kent State University
- Rachel Dubrofsky, University of South Florida
- Amber Johnson, Saint Louis University
- Marina Levina, University of Memphis
- Rebecca Meisenbach, University of Missouri
Research Council
- Iccha Basnyat, James Madison University
- Christopher Carpenter, Western Illinois University
- Richard Craig, George Mason University
- Qingwen Dong, University of the Pacific
- Shinsuke Eguchi, University of New Mexico
- Shaunak Sastry, University of Cincinnati
Teaching and Learning Council
- Kristen Blinne
- Andy Kai-chun Chuang, La Guardia Community College
- Eletra Gilchrist-Petty, University of Alabama, Huntsville
- Eddah Mutua, St. Cloud State University
- Tara Reed, Tarrant County College South
- Andrea Vickery SUNY, Oswego
Governance Committees
To submit a proposal regarding administrative policy for the association, please include a rationale for the policy, relevant historical information about the issue under consideration, and a clear description of the full range of implications of the decision for the organization. It is incumbent upon submitters of administrative policy proposals to study the relevant issues before making a submission. Proposals should be sent to the NCA Executive Director. The Executive Director will send the proposal to the NCA committee with the most relevant expertise for review and recommendation. That recommendation will then go to the Executive Committee for consideration and recommendation and to the Legislative Assembly for a final vote.