Vacationing on a tropical island in the Caribbean, browsing the couture boutiques on the Champs-Elysees, dancing in the latest LA hotspot, gleefully watching the Washington Huskies beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Holiday Bowl. All, except for the last one (yay Huskies!), are things that your Communication Studies professors were not doing over intersession! You know, intersession, that long break between December 18th and January 20th? Are we just lucky and get a super long vacation? The answer: No!
You may remember from an earlier post (Academic Trivia #2: What is tenure? If you missed it, you can read it here: http://blogs.usfca.edu/coms/2010/12/03/academic-trivia-2-what-is-tenure/) that professors are evaluated on three aspects of their job: teaching, research, and service. Most professors use the intersession break to work on these three different parts of our jobs. To prove it, I put a call out to all of the other Communication Studies faculty and asked them what they have been working on over intersession. Here’s what I heard back:
Professor DeLaure: “I have been finishing up a critical analysis essay on No Impact Man (a blog, book, and film about Colin Beavan, a guy in New York City who tried to live for a whole year making zero net impact on the environment). This project builds upon two conference presentations on NIM: at Western States Communication Conference in Alaska last February, and at the National Communication Association conference in SF this past November. I have also been developing a new First Year Seminar for Fall 2011 on Environmental Rhetoric (it will be a public speaking Core course). Tentative title is ‘GreenSpeech: Communication and the Environment.'”
We will be featuring Professor’s DeLaure’s new First Year Seminar on a “Class Notes” post before fall registration opens (yes, you’ll have to wait until then!). You can check out the NIM blog that Professor DeLaure is analyzing here: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/
Professor Thorson: “Over the holiday break, I’ve been writing a piece on communication dilemmas which adult children experience after becoming aware of their parents’ infidelity. For this project, I interviewed 38 individuals who indicated that one or both of their parents engaged in infidelity at some point during their marriage. I am in the process of analyzing these data and connecting the results to theorizing on communication and privacy management.”
Professor Doohan: After practicing my Spanglish with my in-laws over Christmas, I spent time updating my courses for the spring and returning to data that I had previously collected on married couples who perceive themselves to be fundamentally different from their partner in an important way. I worked on writing a literature review on this topic of similarity and difference in marriage (yep, we write literature reviews!).
Professor Ho: “I submitted a literature review about best practices for health communication with Chinese Americans about diabetes and I’m working on a paper analyzing print health education documents about diabetes in light of those best practices.” See, another literature review!
And from what I know, Professor Jacquemet was travelling to Italy doing fieldwork for his research, Professor Whaley was teaching COMS 358: Persuasion and Social Influence, and Professor Burgess was working on her book (on the SS Sabbatical). So, no long vacation for any of us!
Do you have a question about our department, professors, or academic life? Send it to me at edoohan@usfca.edu and I will answer it in an upcoming edition of “Academic Trivia.”
I loved this post. The personal quotes are great… and plus, now we know that students have it a little easier than teachers. 🙂
Professor Doohan forgot to add “blogging”.