Communication centers at colleges and universities: Transitioning from a course resource to an institutional resource

ABSTRACT

This study examined the current operationalization of communication centers. Surveying center directors (N = 47), day-to-day operations were analyzed through descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Specifically, directors provided responses about current institutional context and structure, services, training, marketing, challenges, and support surrounding the center. The findings present comparative information and patterns for centers, while the implications demonstrate the call to expand centers’ missions and vision to institutional resources.

Notes on contributors

Luke LeFebvre is the Director of the Communication Training Center and an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Texas Tech University. His research interests focus on communication pedagogy, technology and instruction, and academic communication centers. He is recognized as an innovative scholar, teacher, and director of the introductory communication course and communication centers, having authored in outlets such as Communication Education, Review of Communication, Basic Communication Course Annual, Communication Teacher, and the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Dr LeFebvre has received early career awards from the Central States Communication Association, National Communication Association, and International Communication Association.

Leah LeFebvre is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama. Her primary research explores the proliferation of emerging technologies that influence past, current, and future communication, relationship processes, and memory. She also examines communication pedagogy. Her recent scholarship appears in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Personal Relationships, Communication Monographs, Communication Education, Communication Teacher, Social Media+Society, and Mobile Media & Communication.

Dale Anderson an Assistant Professor of Speech at Del Mar College, has served as a Coordinator of the Speech Communication Center at Del Mar. He has researched and theorized about the current state and future of Speech Centers. Additionally, he has published and presented his research on race and hip-hop. His work has appeared in the Image of Whiteness anthology and Communication Education.

Notes

1 Data presented in this article came from a larger data set. LeFebvre et al. (2017) presented data about communication centers that relate to the larger academic institution for evolving centers to become institutional resources, whereas this article focuses on the operational functions needed to allow centers to evolve to an institution-wide resource.

2 The term “instructor(s)” is used inclusively for tenure-track and non-tenure track professors, instructors, and adjuncts, as well as graduate teaching assistants.

3 The respondent numbers vary, depending on participants’ prior responses to items, since skip logic was employed to direct and assess knowledge.

4 Possible insights may be gleaned from comparative research examining how other centers with interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary missions function to fulfill center as well as institutional goals (e.g. Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Writing Centers, or other centers/institutes committed to improving undergraduate and graduate education as well as instructor skill sets).

5 Texas Tech University has fully implemented a Graduate Certificate Program in Communication for Center Directors (CCD) at Institutions of Higher Education. The CCD Graduate Certificate is intended to meet the needs of a currently growing yet uncertified population that oversees and manages centers at institutions of higher education. Centers, a permanent fixture across landscapes of colleges and universities, provide important services for undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty, and communication is crucial to the success of these centers. Directors must have the necessary communication skills to articulate their missions to stakeholders and work with diverse populations both across and beyond the university. Moreover, the proposed program will serve a wide variety of graduate students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, which provides a fertile ground for transdisciplinary research and collaboration. The CCD Certification is designed to be flexible and provides graduate students with an opportunity to improve communicative behaviors, study the historical roots and purposes of center missions, explore the richness and complexity of center functions, and partake in the impact of the services provided at centers for learners.

6 Center directors should assess the needs of the institution as well as administrative support before transforming the center. Centers at community colleges or small liberal arts institutions might not need or would not support such a transformation.