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Summer 2009 |
Number 2 |
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Faculty NewsAssistant Professor James Olufowote
By Sarah Belschner '10 (Continued) - During the past four years, he has taught Research Methods (a core class for communication majors), and two writing-intensive courses, Organizational Communication and Communication and Culture in the Workplace, introduced this past spring. According to Prof. Olufowote, this course "covers forms of workplace communication culture in non-profit/profit and local/global workplaces," as well as examines"leadership, workplace democracy, and employee assimilation." For the students partaking in this newly developed class, communication is viewed from an entirely different angle. In addition to a final 25-page analysis focusing on leadership, workplace culture, or theory, students also gain hands-on experience with a visit to a local business to study their workplace culture. This semester the group visited New England Baptist Hospital. Prof. Olufowote is also immersed in award-winning research, as he conducts studies within the healthcare industry. His work has been featured in scholarly publications such as the Western Journal of Communication, Qualitative Health Research, and Management Communication Quarterly. Most recently, Prof. Olufowote conducted "an analysis of the new requirements of professionalism and the content of these required courses in medical schools' curriculum." Having already acquired strong results from institutions in the Northeast, he hopes to conduct a nationwide survey this summer. Originally from West Africa, Prof. Olufowote immigrated to the United States in 1991 with his father, who was pursuing his PhD in agricultural biotechnology. In addition to receiving a bachelor of science degree in corporate communication at Ithaca College, he has also received a master's degree in organizational communication at Michigan State University and a doctorate in organizational and health communication at Purdue University. Prof. Olufowote believes that "time will tell" what he is able to personally accomplish in the communication field, but he hopes to make a "meaningful and significant contribution."
Assistant Professor Roberto Avant-MierBy Julia Clark '10 Roberto Avant-Mier, an assistant professor in the Communication Department, spends his days researching and teaching what would seem like a leisure activity to many: popular music. Prof. Avant-Mier delves deeper, however, into the music. Avant-Mier says he has "learned to take popular music seriously, as a serious academic subject that can often be connected to politics, culture, and contemporary issues." Prof. Avant-Mier is able to do something most people only dream about. He took his lifelong obsession with music and turned it into a career. For a man with many favorite genres of music, he has a broad base from which to teach. Throughout his life, Prof. Avant-Mier has counted rock 'n' roll, country, heavy metal, punk rock, grunge, and folk music among his many favorites. Although music has always been his passion, Prof. Avant-Mier realized his fervor for teaching more recently, in his adult years. He loves interactive teaching with "a lot of conversation and questions" through which the faculty member can actually see the students discovering new things and watch them grow academically. "I love the 'magic moments' when students are engaging the material and you can see them thinking," Prof. Avant-Mier shared. He is so passionate about teaching about music and popular culture, in fact, that he wonders why more people are not doing exactly what he does. In describing the overall communication field, Prof. Avant-Mier (informally known as "Bo" to many of his students) believes that "we're finally here." Since its inception at Boston College, the Communication major had always been viewed as "an up-and-coming field." Communication, since 2006, has consistently been the most popular major in A&S at BC. Prof. Avant-Mier knows that "communication matters more than it ever has."
For Prof. Avant-Mier, the future of communication studies is bright.
As we move forward into a new age of communication, Prof. Avant-Mier
notes that "advancements in media and technology can force communication
studies to remain current and relevant." He also believes that
the major of Communication will become more interdisciplinary and
begin to infiltrate other academic fields including cultural studies,
women's studies, African American studies, and American studies.
The field of communication has made countless improvements in the
way it addresses culture and cultural issues. Through his course,
Popular Music and Identity, Prof. Avant-Mier hopes to continue
this progress.
Assistant Professor Ashley DugganBy Jason Hazzard '10 Having growin up on the foothills of the Appalachia Mountains, Assistant Professor Ashley Duggan received her undergraduate education at the University of Georgia, majoring in journalism before returning for her master's degree. Her pursuit of higher learning did not end there, as she made the move to the University of California Santa Barbara to obtain her Ph.D. in 2003. Since that time she has been here in the Communication Department, teaching Research Methods and Health Communication. Professor Duggan specifically researches nonverbal, relational, and health communication-molding interpersonal and health communication together in order to better understand the relationship between the physician and the patient on a communication level. Her commitment to linking interpersonal and health communication has led her to receive nine "top paper" awards as well as publication in many ranking communication journals. In lay terms, Duggan's research connects the physician's mannerisms and body language when informing a patient of a diagnosis to the patient's success rate in recovering from the disease. "Our goal is to enhance physicians' empathy when talking with a patient; if the doctors appear apathetic, the patients will have an even more pessimistic view of the battle to come, and the results of this could be deadly," Duggan states. "Pitch, vocal inflection, and eye contact are all taken into account." Duggan and her colleagues, who hail from universities all over Boston, use observational analysis to collect data. By filming a large-scale study of patients and physicians and noting each coded behavior throughout the interaction, Duggan is able to prescribe a better communication method to the doctor, and oftentimes the results are dramatic. "After viewing the results, the physicians are given feedback in a descriptive, not critical manner," Duggan says. Duggan's research has proven that when physicians are more empathetic while speaking with a patient, the patient's success rate increases exponentially. Duggan has several studies on her plate at Boston College, and many more publications to come. "There is a lot more research to be done," Duggan adds. "Our ultimate goal is to inform people that all aspects of their communication, not just their rhetoric, influence the behaviors and outcomes of each audience member listening." |
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