Leadership and Governance

Stephen John Hartnett is a Professor in the Department of Communication at The University of Colorado Denver, where he is the editor of Captured Words/Free Thoughts, an annual magazine of poems and stories crafted by imprisoned writers. For the past 27 years, he has been teaching in, writing about, and working for change at America's prisons. He has taught college classes and poetry workshops in prisons and jails in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, California and Colorado, and has facilitated workshops, participated on panels, and given lectures against the death penalty in 28 states. His commentary on these subjects has appeared in Salon, AlterNet, In These Times, and others, and on MSNBC and over 100 radio stations. 

He is one of the co-founders of PCARE, a national group of scholars who work on Prison Communication Activism Research and Education. In recognition of this work, he has received numerous awards, including the Northwest Communication Association's 2008 Human Rights Award, the University of Colorado's 2010 Thomas Jefferson Award, and the University of Colorado Denver’s 2014 Service Excellence Award. 

Hartnett is the author or editor of 9 books and dozens of publications related to democracy, social justice, prisons, globalization and empire, and the death penalty, including his latest work, the co-edited Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in the Age of Globalization, forthcoming from the Michigan State University Press in 2017. His publications appear in venues such as the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, the Journal of Applied Communication Research, and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. He is the recipient of numerous research awards, including the Winans and Wichelns Award for Distinguished Research in Public Address, the National Communication Association’s Golden Monograph Award, the Karlyn Kohrs Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism, and a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Justin P. Boren is an associate professor in the department of communication at Santa Clara University, where he teaches courses in organizational and interpersonal communication, quantitative research methods, and communibiology. He received his PhD from the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. He also holds an M.A. and a B.A. from California State University, Long Beach. Boren's scholarship focuses on the way that social support networks impact the experience of co-worker stress. He studies work/life balance, organizational culture, psychological and physiological stress, and employee relationships. His work on social support networks led him to the development of a unique construct called "communicatively restricted organizational stress" (CROS), which is defined as an employee's perceived inability to communicate about particular stressors. His work has linked CROS to specific health-related outcomes and he is currently working with colleagues to develop intervention techniques to reduce employee stress in high CROS organizations. His work has also explored the impact of co-rumination (or excessive problem talk between individuals) on psychological and physiological outcomes. Boren is a commissioner with the Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission, which works to advise the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on human rights-related issues within the county. He is also the Second Vice President of the Western States Communication Association.

Bonnie J. Dow is Dean of Humanities and Professor of Communication Studies in the College of Arts & Science at Vanderbilt University. She has formerly held faculty positions at the University of Cincinnati, North Dakota State University, and the University of Georgia. Dow is a rhetorical and media scholar whose research interests include the rhetoric and representation of the first and second waves of feminism in the United States. She holds a B.A. from Baylor University, an M.A. from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. from University of Minnesota. She is the author of Watching Women’s Liberation, 1970: Feminism’s Pivotal Year on the Network News(University of Illinois Press, 2014) and Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). She is co-editor (with Julia T. Wood) of The Sage Handbook of Gender and Communication(2006) and a co-editor of The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers, Volume One: 17th –19th Centuries (Aunt Lute Books, 2004). Dow is the recipient of NCA’s Winans-Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Pubic Address, NCA’s Douglas W. Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award, NCA’s Golden Anniversary Monograph Award, the NCA Women’s Caucus Francine Merritt Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Lives of Women in Communication, and the NCA LBGTQ Caucus Lambda Award for Outstanding Contributions to the LBGTQ Academic Community. Dow is a former member of the NCA Publications Board, a former Chair of the NCA Doctoral Education Committee, and a former editor of Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Mindy Fenske is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina (USC).  She received her M.A. from Arizona State University, and her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. She is the current Editor of Text and Performance Quarterly (2016-2018), and the former Director of the Speech Communication and Rhetoric Program at USC.

Fenske is a performance studies and rhetoric scholar whose research interests include the critical genealogy of bodies in contemporary visual culture, the political force of embodiment in the public sphere, the role of embodied performance in the history of rhetoric and oratory, and the ethics of performance composition and research. Fenske is the author of Tattoos in American Visual Culture (2007) as well as several essays published in journals such as Communication and Critical Cultural Studies, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Review of Communication, and Text and Performance Quarterly.  Fenske is the recipient of NCA’s Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies and NCA’s Golden Anniversary Monograph Award.

Shannon VanHorn is a Professor of Education and Graduate Studies at Valley City State University. She holds both an M.S. and a Ph. D. in Communication Studies from North Dakota State University.  She has served NCA on the nominating committee, through the leadership rotation of the Human Communication and Technology Division and the Communication and the Future Division, chaired The Donald P. Cushman Award, and as a member of the Educational Policies Board.

In addition, VanHorn is active in the Central States Communication Association, having served through the leadership rotation of the Instructional Resource Interest Group and currently as a member of the Presidential Economic Initiative of Higher Education. She has been the President of the Communication, Speech, and Theatre Association of North Dakota, as well as edited the Journal of Communication, Speech, and Theatre of North Dakota.

VanHorn’s research interests include communication pedagogy, instructional technology, faculty development, and online learning, and has published in such venues as Argumentation and Advocacy, Communication Quarterly, Journal of Advertising Education, and Qualitative Research Reports. 

Ronald E. Shields is Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Mass Communication at Sam Houston State University.

Prior to joining Sam Houston State University in July 2013, Shields served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) for 17 years, where he was recognized for his leadership, research, creative work, service and teaching.

A graduate of the doctoral program at Louisiana State University, Shields played a key role in building internal and external support for the arts at BGSU, including the opening of a new performing arts center in 2012, the designation of "the arts" as a Center of Excellence at BGSU, and the cultivation of diversity, interdisciplinary programs, as well as expanded curricular offerings.

A performance studies scholar and active theatre director, his research areas include staging baroque opera, the intersections of aesthetics and cultural practices, and performance history and theory. He served as the Editor for Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies for nine years (2002-2011) and continues to serve on that journal’s editorial board as well as an Associate Editor for NCA’s Text and Performance Quarterly. His recent work as an opera director includes performances of his adaptations of Handel’s Hercules and Acis and Galetea and Telemann’s Don Quixote. His scholarship has appeared in several journals and edited volumes, including most recently a chapter in Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture (edited by L. Olson, C. Finnegan, and D. Hope). He was honored to receive the Central States Communication Association Award for Outstanding Performance Studies Scholarship (2004), the Distinguished Service Award from the Theatre Division of NCA (2005), and the Leslie Irene Cogar Award for Distinguished Performance (2006).

Raymie E. McKerrow retired 9/1/15 as the Charles E. Zumkehr Professor in the School of Communication Studies, and Affiliate Faculty in Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University. He earned his B. S. in Speech at Southern Illinois University, an M. A. at Colorado State University, and his Ph. D. in Speech Communication at the University of Iowa. He taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1971-73), the University of Maine, and Ohio University (1995-2015).

He taught undergraduate and graduate courses, primarily in contemporary rhetorical theory and  feminist rhetoric. At Ohio University, he has directed 12 MA committees, 29 doctoral dissertations, and served on 40 doctoral committees.

He has served as President of the Eastern Communication Association and as President of the National Communication Association. He also has edited Argumentation and Advocacy, Communication Quarterly, the Review of Communication and the Quarterly Journal of Speech. He has received the Wallace A. Bacon Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Critical and Cultural Studies Division, the Douglas Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award, and the Charles H. Woolbert Award from NCA. 

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.

Dr. Parry-Giles's research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary relationships between rhetoric, politics, law, and popular culture. He is the co-author The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism and Constructing Clinton: Hyperreality and Presidential Image-Making in Postmodern Politics (which received the Everett Lee Hunt Award from the Eastern Communication Association). Dr. Parry-Giles is also the author of The Character of Justice: Rhetoric, Law, and Politics in the Supreme Court Confirmation Process (recipient of the NCA Diamond Anniversary Book Award, the Kohrs-Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism, and the NCA Public Address Division's Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award). His research has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 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.