An engaging guide to speaking and advocating in a digital world

Pat Gehrke is a professor of communication at the University of South Carolina and widely recognized as an innovator in public speaking pedagogy and a leading authority on the history of communication studies. He has authored or edited seven books, including the award-winning Ethics and Politics of Speech (SIU Press), A Century of Communication Studies (Routledge), and Teaching First-Year Communication Courses (Routledge). From 2013 to 2016 he edited the National Communication Association’s Review of Communication and twice received NCA's presidential citation for service to the discipline. He has more than twenty years of experience designing, teaching, and directing public speaking and communication courses, including creating USC's innovative course in online public speaking and its 7-week program in communication anxiety management. He holds a PhD in communication from the Pennsylvania State University.  

Megan Foley is the curator of standpointadvocacy.org, a digital resource for advocates, activists, and educators committed to social justice. They have fifteen years of college teaching experience and have taught more than a dozen different undergraduate courses, including public speaking, intercultural communication, gender and communication, persuasion, small group communication, nonverbal communication, interpersonal communication, communication theory, and rhetorical theory. They have published award-winning research in Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Philosophy & Rhetoric, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and the Journal of Communication Studies. They have served on the editorial boards of the Quarterly Journal of Speech and Women’s Studies in Communication as well as on the National Communication Association’s Leadership Development Board. They hold a PhD in communication studies from the University of Iowa.