Professional Growth
Since joining the Fredonia faculty in 2016, I have worked to establish a record that indicates professional growth and contributions in all professional areas. This growth will continue once I receive continuing appointment and promotion to the rank of Associate Professor. In this section, I discuss areas of professional growth that occurred during the review period.
Key Avenues Taken for Professional Growth
Professional Memberships
- National Communication Association (NCA)
- Rhetoric Society for America (RSA)
- Organization for Research on Women and Communication (ORWC)
- League of Women Voters, Buffalo/Niagara (LWVBN)
- The NCA, RSA, and ORWC memberships grant me online access to 12 academic journals publishing research that informs my scholarship and course curricula.
- The communication-related organizations also publish newsletters and magazines that keep me up-to-date on professional resources and topics related to communication and public advocacy.
- The NCA membership offers sample syllabi and course outlines along with talking points on what students gain from a degree in communication.
- The LWVBN membership includes email updates on political issues that are relevant to Buffalo and Niagara Counties along with a monthly "Voter" newsletter and a newsletter from the national office.
Conference & Workshop Attendance
McGowan-Kirsch, A.M. (2021). The 2020 Campaign and Its Aftermath: Presidentiality and Peril competitively selected participant. Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Institute. Syracuse, NY [virtual].
- Rhetoric Society of America is a national professional organization.
- I was competitively selected to attend the Rhetoric Society of America's 2021 Summer Institute. Other rhetoric faculty and doctoral students from across the county and I met to discuss the 2020 presidential campaign. Specifically, this workshop focused on questions such as the following: What can we learn from a Democratic primary process that began with the most diverse major-party field in history and concluded with the nomination of a white hetero male septuagenarian? How did the 2020 campaign reinforce Whiteness and white supremacy? In what ways did the 2020 campaign challenge and reinforce the patriarchal, cisgender, and hetero norms of the U.S. presidency? How did radical and reactionary discourses collide in 2020? How did candidates and voters resist presidential norms such as Whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, ability, and Judeo-Christianity? In what ways and to what effect did politics and popular culture intersect in 2020? As a workshop participant, I engaged in discussions about readings on campaign rhetoric, presidentiality, and systemic oppressions in democratic culture. The workshop also included time and space for participants to share our own scholarship and provide feedback to one another. You can read the workshop's agenda.
- National Communication Association is a national professional organization.
- Throughout the virtual conference, I attended panel sessions and watched pre-recorded presentations that offered knowledge on relevant topics. Namely, I attended panels that discussed political communication and watched pre-recorded pedagogically-based lectures.
- Rhetoric Society of America is a national professional organization.
- Other rhetoric faculty and doctoral students from across the county and I met to discuss "the rhetorics of motherhood" over the course of three days. The workshop focused on two interrelated yet distinct lines of inquiry: First, how does public discourse about mothers shape expectations of motherhood as an identity and practice, evaluation and judgment of women’s mothering, and the actual experiences and potential of mothering practices, whether conforming or in resistance to such culturally and politically constructed views? Second, how have women (some of whom are mothers, some of whom are not) appealed to motherhood to effect change in the public sphere, and in turn, how have those practices (from maternal rhetorical strategies to maternal activism and resistance) affected understandings of motherhood? I completed a set of readings prior to attending the workshop and arrived prepared to share my own work-in-progress. Furthermore, we discussed how we could incorporate motherhood scholarship into our courses. You can read the workshop's syllabus here. The researchers who led the workshop were top scholars in the field of rhetoric, as were some of the participants.
- Eastern Communication Association is a regional conference.
- While attending the Eastern Communication Conference (ECA), I listened to panels, ventured to networking events, and supported Department of Communication majors who presented their research at ECA's undergraduate research conference. During a luncheon at ECA, I was recognized as a professor who supported undergraduate research. The students, my colleague Dr. Lohiser, and I represented the university and department. Together, we built a reputation within ECA as being a Department of Communication that offers students rigorous undergraduate research opportunities.
Resources Used to Enhance Teaching & Learning
- I read journals that publish research on communication pedagogy. These journals include Communication Education, Journal of Communication Pedagogy, College Teaching, and Communication Teacher
- During the Summer of 2020, I helped the PDC organize a virtual book discussion of Conquering the Content: A Blueprint for Online Course Design. Seventeen SUNY Each week I joined fredonia faculty members virtually to discuss the book's contents and online learning.
- During Summer of 2020, I attended the New York Voter Engagement Summit for Colleges & Universities. This summit helped me prepare for getting Fredonia students civically engaged during the 2020 election season.
- During the Summer 2020, the Digital Instruction Support team and I wrote modules for remote learning that faculty could take. I also completed the pathways modules for remote learning.
- During June and July of 2020, I attended pathways virtual workshops that members of the Digital Instruction Support team hosted. These workshops positioned me to be an effective online/remote educator.
- In July of 2020, I was invited to participate in a "Zoom Admin Training." I learned about the different settings in Zoom. The knowledge gained from this training helped me be able to answer questions that faculty posed during Zoom workshops that the Digital Instruction Team hosted.
- I routinely watched/listened to the NCA Speaker Series: Developing Ideas for Teaching and Research.
- I frequently communicated with my Fredonia peer mentor, Dr. Jill Reese, and other colleagues.
- I regularly read these online resources: Faculty Focus and Tomorrow’s Professor eNewsletter.
- I read publications from professional organizations: NEA's Higher Education Advocate, NCA's Spectra .
I routinely read books that overviewed classroom management techniques and new ways to facilitate class discussion. Some of these books include:
- Houff, S. (2012). Instructional alignment: Optimizing objectives, methods, and assessment for developing unit plans. Rowman & Littlefield Education.
- Kramer, K.P. (2013). Learning through dialogue. Rowman & Littlefield Education.
- Major, M.R. (2008). The teacher's survival guide: Real classroom dilemmas and practical solutions. Rowman & Littlefield Education.
- Seeman, H. (2010). Preventing disruptive behavior in colleges. Rowman & Littlefield Education.
- Seiter, J. S., Peeples, J., & Sanders, M. L. (2018). Communication in the classroom: A collection of G.I.F.T.S. Bedford/St. Martin's.
- Smith, R.M. (2014). Conquering the content: A blueprint for online course design and development (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
I read many books that supported my research goals and topics I discussed in the classroom. Here are just a few of the books I read:
- Colby, A., Beaumont, E., Ehrlich, T., & Corngold, J. (2007). Educating for democracy: Preparing undergraduates for responsible political engagement. Jossey-Bass.
- Delli Carpini, M. X., & Keeter, S. (1996). What Americans know about politics and why it matters. Yale University.
- Dittmar, K., Sanbonmatsu, K., & Carroll, S. J. (2018). A seat at the table: Congresswomen's perspectives on why their presence matters.
- Faucheux, R. A. (2002). Running for office. Evans and Company, Inc.
- Independent Women's Forum. (2014). Lean together: An agenda for smarter government, stronger communities, and more opportunity for women. IWF Press.
- McDonald, M. J. (2017). The Oxford handbook of rhetorical studies. Oxford University Press.
- Middleton, M., Hess, A., Endres, D., & Senda-Cook, S. (2015). Participatory critical rhetoric: Theoretical and methodological foundations for studying rhetoric in situ. Lexington Books.
- Norris, P. (1997). Women, media, and politics. Oxford University Press.
- Parry-Giles, S. J. (2014). Hillary Clinton in the news: Gender and authenticity in American politics. University of Illinois Press.
- Rosenthal, C. S. (1998). When women lead. Oxford University Press.
- Sive, R. (2013). Every day is election day: A woman's guide to winning any office, from the PTA to the White House. The Sive Group, Inc.
- Thomas, S. (1994). How women legislate. Oxford University Press.
- Whipple, C. C. (2017). The gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff define every presidency. Random House LLC.