Professor
Director, Center for Dispute Resolution

Ph.D., University of Minnesota (1991)
M.A., University of Montana (1980)
B.A.., Western Washington University (1977)

Teaching and Research Areas
Family communication, conflict communication, research methods

"My teaching and research interests are in the areas of family and interpersonal communication, gender communication, and communication education. My methodological background and strength is in qualitative research methods. I believe however, that research questions should dictate the methodological approach and I am firmly committed to projects which combine both quantitative and qualitative methods to answer research questions. I have interests in both theoretical and applied research relating to family and gender communication in a variety of contexts. My theoretical orientation has been influenced by systems theory, symbolic interactionism and cultural approaches to the study of families and interpersonal issues. My research interests are fairly eclectic and I have explored a wide range of topics including communication apprehension and its etiology in the family, mediated interpersonal interaction, learning styles and communication education, social support and life threatening illness, and family crises. Currently I am involved in two research projects. The first examines disenfranchisement and its influence on families' ability to manage personal crises and the second explores the metaphors used by high and low communication apprehensive adolescents to describe the communication in their family of origin."

Selected Courses
COM 506/607, COM 511/611, COM 521/621, COM 714