Leadership and Governance

Devika Chawla is Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University and Affiliated faculty with Interdisciplinary Arts, Women’s and Gender Studies, Communication and Development, International Development Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies. She received her B.A. in English Literature and Literary Criticism from the University of Delhi. She holds two M.A. degrees; the first in English Print Journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi, and the second in Speech Communication and Dramatic Arts from Central Michigan University. She received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies with related emphases in Family Studies and Social Anthropology from Purdue University.

Dr. Chawla’s research focuses on communicative, performative, and narrative approaches to studying family, home, and its relationship to social identity. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how human beings transform themselves in the relationships that surround them, and the resources – social, political, economic – that are available to them. Most of her field research has taken place in the context of marriage and family life in contemporary urban north India. Dr. Chawla is the author of Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition (Fordham University Press), which won the 2015 Outstanding Book Award from the Ethnography Division and the International and Intercultural Division of the National Communication Association. She has published three other co-authored and edited books and over 55 essays in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies. She is Senior Associate Editor (south Asia and southeast Asia) for the Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Communication. From 2019 to 2021, she served as editor-in-chief of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, a journal published by the University of California Press. 

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.

Vinita Agarwal is 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 five 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.

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. He has received NCA's Presidential Citation for Service twice. 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 nearly 10 languages. Two of his anthologies have received NCA's Outstanding Book Award in a) Family Communication ("The Family Communication Sourcebook") and in b) Applied Communication ("Routledge Handbook of Communication and Bullying"). Dr. West has received a number of academic 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."

He has also written articles for Edible Maine magazine and his expertise/research has been featured in the Washington Post, USA Today, Vanity Fair, Christian Science Monitor, AARP Magazine, among many others.

Rich is an award-winning gardener and his 117-year-old home and gardens in Maine have appeared in numerous media outlets.

Jimmie Manning is Professor and Chair of Communication Studies in the School of Social Research and Justice Studies at the University of Nevada. He earned bachelor’s degrees in Speech/Communication, Dramatic Arts, and English from Emporia State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Kansas. 

Dr. Manning’s research focuses on relational and family communication. This work spans multiple contexts to understand how individuals, couples, families, organizations, and cultural institutions attempt to define, support, control, limit, encourage, or otherwise negotiate relationships. He explores these ideas through three contexts: relational discourses, especially those related to family, identity, love, gender, and/or sexuality; relational efficacy in health and organizational contexts; and digitally-mediated communication. This work has resulted in over 100 publications in outlets including Communication Monographs, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, among others. 

Dr. Manning has received several research, teaching, and service awards including the NCA Kibler and Ecroyd awards, the International Association for Relationship Research Teaching Award, the Warren and Kay awards from the Central States Communication Association, and the Outreach and Gender Studies Scholar awards from the Southern States Communication Association, among others. He comes to the NCA finance committee with extensive service at the regional, national, and international levels..

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.

Shari Miles-Cohen, Ph.D., joined NCA as Executive Director in January 2022. Before joining NCA, Miles-Cohen served as the American Psychological Association’s (APA) primary expert on domestic human rights and issues affecting marginalized populations in the US, overseeing APA’s Ethnic Minority Affairs, Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, and Women’s Portfolios. She co-created and led APA’s flagship leadership development program and the innovative “I am Psyched! Initiative,” now a digitized exhibit in the Smithsonian Learning Lab.

Previously, Miles-Cohen led the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the African American Women’s Institute at Howard University, and the Women’s Research & Education Institute. She was a Congressional Fellow and a District of Columbia Commission for Women member. She has traveled extensively domestically and internationally to promote the interface between research and policy and has convened six international interdisciplinary conferences.

Miles-Cohen is a member of the Palo Alto University Board of Trustees. She is an APA Fellow and a member of professional societies focused on gender, ethnicity and culture, social issues, disability, leadership, science, and philanthropy.

Miles-Cohen earned her Ph.D. in personality psychology from Howard University and has published scholarly works throughout her career. Most recently, she co-authored an article on women’s leadership development and co-edited a book on eliminating health inequities for women with disabilities.