The Graduate Faculty
Listed below are the members of the graduate faculty and their respective areas of research. Although the individual research areas vary, the faculty as a whole embraces an empirical, social scientific research orientation.
Theodore A. Avtgis, Associate Professor
Ph.D., Kent State University
Areas: Organizational, Interpersonal, Personality
Dr. Avtgis’s research focuses on the impact that personality exerts on human communication. Dr. Avtgis studies argumentative and aggressive communication and their manifestation on work and family relationships. For example, his most recent work involves investigating employee burnout syndrome as influenced by verbally aggressive communication and vocation. Another facet of Dr. Avtgis’s research includes argumentativeness training in efforts to decrease the tendency to use verbal aggression. Relational power and control also are areas in which he is conducting research. Throughout his research history he has used a variety of research methodologies including survey, experimental, focus group, and meta-analysis. In 2006, Dr. Avtgis co-authored the monograph Argumentative and Aggressive Communication: Theory, Research, and Application published by Sage Publications.
Melanie Booth-Butterfield, Professor
Ph.D., University of Missouri
Areas: Interpersonal, Health, Emotion/Cognition
Dr. Booth-Butterfield’s professional emphasis is on using one-to-one communication to address real-life interpersonal and social problems. This emphasis involves both application of existing communication concepts to new issues as well as developing new approaches and examining communication using nontypical samples of respondents. She is open to a variety of content areas of empirical research and enjoys investigating new content areas. Most recently, Dr. Booth-Butterfield has conducted research primarily in the areas of communication cognition and emotion (especially Affective Orientation), processes and outcomes involved with humor enactments (e.g., Humor Orientation), interpersonal/relational communication, and influence in health. Her health-related communication research focuses on how various communication patterns and personality traits affect message reception, decoding, and ultimately behavior (e.g., anxiety, conscientiousness, emotional responsiveness, screening behaviors, risk-taking). In 2006, Dr. Booth-Butterfield was named the McConnell Chair in Speech Communication and will serve in this capacity for a three-year term (www.livelongwv.com).
Maria Brann, Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Kentucky
Areas: Health, Qualitative Research Methods, Interpersonal
Dr. Brann’s research focuses on the integration of interpersonal, organizational, and health communication. Dr. Brann’s primary research interests focus on the study of ethical issues in health communication contexts, specifically the many facets of patient confidentiality in health care communication. Other significant research interests also focus on healthy lifestyles through physical activity, women’s health issues including ethical gynecological care, differing aspects of body image, the aging population, gender constructions, and drug and alcohol abuse. Theoretically, Dr. Brann researches how communication influences the aforementioned areas in relationships among individuals and with the social world. Methodologically, Dr. Brann’s research questions guide the specific data-gathering techniques employed and include observations, interviews, surveys, and focus groups.
Rebecca M. Chory, Associate Professor
Ph.D., Michigan State University
Areas: Media, Organizational, Quantitative Research Methods
Dr. Chory’s research focuses on the relationship between entertainment media exposure and aggression. Using experimental, survey, and content analytic research methods, Dr. Chory studies effects of violent video game play, the cognitive processing of violence that occurs in a humorous context (e.g., sitcom verbal aggression), and media consumers’ involvement with media content and characters. She also has begun studying the role that media consumers’ traits and content interpretations play in the media effects process, with her most recent work examining the moderating effects of basic personality, empathy, and interpretations of violent content on the violent video game play-aggression relationship. She also is examining individual differences and textual/content features as predictors of involvement with television programming and video games. In addition to her media-related research, Dr. Chory studies the causes and prevention of antisocial communication and behaviors (e.g., aggression, injustice, deception) in organizational and instructional contexts.
Megan R. Dillow, Assistant Professor
Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University
Areas: Interpersonal/Relational Communication
Dr. Dillow’s research focuses generally on communication within interpersonal relationships, with particular interest in examining communication within the context of romantic relationships. Her primary research interests are focused specifically around the types of communication that occur during and after the experience of ?dark side? or relationally-threatening events such as transgressions, relational deterioration, and relationship termination. In addition, Dr. Dillow maintains a continued interest in conducting research on post-dissolutional relationships (i.e., romantic relationships that have been reconciled after dissolution). A secondary area of interest concerns health issues within an interpersonal context, such as the health implications of negative relational experiences.
Joan Gorham, Professor
Ed.D., Northern Illinois University
Areas: Instructional, Media, Nonverbal
Dr. Gorham’s primary research area has been classroom communication, particularly teacher immediacy. Studies in this series have employed experimental and survey designs, frequently incorporating a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. Favorite pieces investigated theoretical explanations for the immediacy-learning relationship, examined teachers’ ability to effectively monitor use of immediacy behaviors, analyzed immediacy’s relationship with student- and teacher-perceived sources of motivation and demotivation, and incorporated immediacy as a variable in three “fashion in the classroom” studies of instructor attire, conducted with colleagues in WVU’s psychology department. Dr. Gorham also has an interest in mass media, though she publishes in that area more as a teacher than a theory-builder. She is editor of the Mass Media collection in McGraw-Hill’s Annual Editions series, in its 13th edition, and has taken an occasional turn at media content analysis.
Matthew M. Martin, Professor and Department Chair
Ph.D., Kent State University
Areas: Interpersonal, Personality, Instructional
Dr. Martin’s research focuses extensively on the study of communication traits using quantitative methodologies. His primary research interests center on the study of traits involving communication competence (e.g., cognitive flexibility) and aggressive communication (e.g., verbal aggression). A secondary area of research involves studying people’s motives for communicating with others. His recent research has focused on why students communicate with their instructors, both in and out of the classroom. Other instructional studies have focused on instructor self-disclosure, instructor clarity, and student interest. Additionally, Dr. Martin is interested in communication measurement (e.g., scale construction and validation). He also remains interested in exploring communication across contexts, including instructional, family, relational, sports, health, group, and mass communication.
Scott A. Myers, Professor
Ph.D., Kent State University
Areas: Instructional, Family, Educational Leadership
Dr. Myers’s research focuses primarily on the role communication plays in the instructor-student relationship, both in and out of the classroom, using experimental, survey, and content analytic research methods. Working with Dr. Martin, he continues to examine the motives students use to communicate with their instructors. His current research projects focus on student participation in the classroom as function of instructor communicative behavior and student cognitive development. In addition to instructional communication, Dr. Myers also conducts research on sibling communication and currently is completing a series of studies examining sibling relational maintenance across the lifespan. Dr. Myers served as a Woodburn Professor from 2005-2007.
Brian R. Patterson, Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Oklahoma
Areas: Developmental, Communication Theory
Dr. Patterson’s research interests are in communication and development, also known as life-span developmental communication. His research focuses on communication in old age along with how communication changes from one end of the lifespan to the other. Concomitantly, Dr. Patterson is interested in how friendships develop and change from “womb to tomb.” A second area of interest is in research methods. He is especially interested in issues related to measurement and cross-over applications between qualitative and quantitative techniques. Finally, a new area of interest for him is the role of biology in communication.
Keith D. Weber, Associate Professor
Ed.D., West Virginia University
Areas: Applied, Instructional, Persuasion
Dr. Weber’s primary research focus is on the relevance of persuasion theory in applied contexts. Recently, Dr. Weber was the recipient of a Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration grant in order to design, implement, and evaluate a multi-channel intervention aimed at increasing organ donor awareness and compliance. The award is for a two year period from 2005-2007. Additionally, Dr. Weber has begun a program of research in which he and his students are designing a campus-based intervention in order to decrease the incidence of drinking and driving. In addition to his research focusing on campaign design (e.g., organ donation, drunk driving), Dr. Weber remains committed to his instructional research on the importance of student interest in the classroom, a topic on which he has recently published a series of articles.
David Westerman, Assistant Professor
ABD, Michigan State University
Areas: Mediated, Social Influence
Mr. Westerman’s research focuses on how people use media channels for both entertainment and social interaction purposes and the effects media have in these processes. His recent work has examined how people seek information and form impressions of other people online. Using social information processing theory as a framework, he has examined how people attempt to reduce uncertainty when meeting strangers over instant messaging compared with meeting them face-to-face. Other research in this area has focused on the impressions people form of others based on online experiences. Mr. Westerman’s research also examines how technology changes the entertainment experience by studying concepts like presence and how technology impacts the enjoyment of entertainment content (including video games). He recently has started to examine the role of new communication technologies in communication campaigns.
