Dr. Norman Clark Tenure Application: Scholarship of Discovery

Summary Statement
Since coming to ASU, I have been very active in the scholarship of discovery. I will summarize the magnitude and significance of my efforts in three areas: the assessment project, publications, and conference papers.

I have been leading a long-term project to assess the improvement of students' public speaking skills. Right now, we have collected four years worth of data looking at students' public speaking abilities when they arrive at ASU. We plan to re-test the students in their junior or senior years to see whether their skills have improved. Some of the preliminary data is already quite interesting. I was very grateful to have received a grant from Institutional Research for release time during the fall semester of 2000. This made it possible for me to help organize and run the assessment day as well as evaluate all of the 170 speeches. Glenda Treadaway and I are currently working on an article about the results of the prior speaking skills survey, which shows that debate experience in high school is one of the best predictors of public speaking ability. But what should be even more interesting is the data we collect in the students' junior years. This data will be useful not only for publications, but also for our internal assessment of how well we are teaching public speaking. By "we" I mean not only the department, but also ASU as a whole. From this data we will be able to see whether or not the S-designator system is effective. The magnitude of this project is evident in both the length of the project, and the definitiveness of the work, since no other long-term assessment like this has been conducted, as well as in the time and effort spent in production. This significance is also great, since this project will have impacts at the local through national levels, and the results will be applicable for schools around the country who use similar systems of course designators. I've been quoted even in a newspaper (the Sun-Sentinal) already about the preliminary results of our study!

My publication record here is also outstanding. My most significant publication was my article in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, the leading national journal in the area of rhetorical communication (to read this article, you can check out an online version of it that I put up). It was in large part due to that refereed publication that I was awarded the North Dakota Speech & Theater Association's award for the Scholar of the Year (I was a member of this association during my undergraduate and graduate years at the University of North Dakota). Since then, I have published a chapter in an edited volume on the critical significance of educational portals, and an article about the impact of the Communication Decency Act on community networks. Both of these publications were a result of people hearing my presentations at conferences and being impressed by the quality of my work, and then asking me to contribute.

I have also worked hard to maintain a consistent presence at national and regional conventions, presenting papers in all areas of scholarship (see other tabs as well). The time spent in attending several conferences each year, representing ASU to a wide variety of audiences, speaks to the magnitude of my efforts here.

Activities

Grants
- Assessment Release Time Grant, Appalachian State University, 2000–01
Awards
- North Dakota Speech and Theater Association Scholar of the Year, 1996
Book Chapter
- (2001). Education, Communication, and Consumption: Piping in the Academic Community. In M. Mowbray & C. Werry (Eds.), Online Communities: Commerce, Community Action, and the Virtual University, p.92–107. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Articles
- (1999). Freedom & Responsibility in the Decent Community: Community Networks and the Communication Decency Act. Southern Communication Journal, 64, 259–268.
- (1996). The critical servant: An Isocratean contribution to critical rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 82, 111–124. [Refereed]
Conference Papers
- You Want to Assess How Many Freshman?: Large-Scale Assessment of Public Speaking. Presented at the Southern States Communication Association Convention, Lexington, KY, April 4–8, 2001.
- Education, Communication, and Consumption: Piping in the Academic Community. Presented at the Rethinking the Human Sciences Convention, Washington D.C., April 7–8, 2000.
- The Mythos of Place and Time: Constructing the Local Community on the Internet. Presented at the Joint Central and Southern States Communication Associations Convention, St. Louis, MO, Apr. 8–11, 1999. [Refereed]
- Uses of the Scout Report in Communication Research. Presented at the Joint Central and Southern States Communication Associations Convention, St. Louis, MO, Apr. 8–11, 1999.
- Freedom and Responsibility in the Decent Community. Presented at the Carolinas Speech Communication Association Convention: Charleston, SC, Oct. 3–4, 1997.
Ongoing Research Projects
- Public Speaking Assessment, 1999–present. Heading a University-wide assessment project to measure improvement in public speaking skills in cooperation with Institutional Research. Currently working on an article with Glenda Treadaway about the impact of debate on public speaking skills. I project that the data from this project that is still being collected will result in 2-3 more papers in refereed journals over the next 2 years.