Faculty
(Click on name to view information on each)

Karolyn Cannata-Winge Mary Jane Collier Patricia O. Covarrubias Karma R. Chávez Janet Cramer Karen A. Foss Miguel Gandert Dirk C. Gibson

Judith Hendry Dennis Herrick Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik Virginia McDermott Sara L. McKinnon Tema Milstein John G. Oetzel Saumya Pant

Nagesh Rao Ilia Rodríguez Richard Schaefer Jan Schuetz Janet Shiver Olaf Werder Judith White Gill Woodall

Karolyn Cannata-Winge teaches classes in journalism and mass communication and works with the department's academic adviser as the internship coordinator. Previously she was an assistant professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and a lecturer at the University of Texas at El Paso. She also has been an assistant design director at the Albuquerque Journal and a features and news designer at the Detroit Free Press. In addition to teaching, she owns Jersey Girl Designs, a freelance design/consulting business. See her profile.

Karma R. Chávez, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2007
Office: Room 235

Dr. Chávez came as a communication faculty member in the autumn of 2008. Her current research generally explores the rhetorics of marginalized groups in contexts of neo-liberalism. She is most interested in the relationships between sexuality and immigration. See her profile and visit Dr. Chávez' home page.

Patricia O. Covarrubias, Associate Professor

Ph.D., University of Washington, 1999
Office: Room 220, 505-277-2166

Dr. Covarrubias is the M.A. program director for 2009-2010. She teaches courses in cultural and intercultural communication; language, thought, and behavior; global metaphors; qualitative research methods with emphasis on language and social interaction; and the ethnography of communication. A native of Mexico, her current research interests are with American Indian uses of communicative silence. Her current work also includes collecting narratives of racism to advance the study of race and communication. She also is continuing her work with Latinist/Hispanic/Latino/Chicano(a) ways of communicating. See her profile and visit Patricia Covarrubias' home page.

Janet M. Cramer, Associate Professor

Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1999
Office: Room 231, 505-277-1906

Dr. Cramer was appointed as special assistant to the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in the summer of 2009. She continues to also teach at C&J, as she has since 1999. She is a former director of the Women Studies Department and serves on the board of the UNM Feminist Research Institute. She has 15 years of professional experience in broadcast journalism, advertising, and public relations with broadcast and nonprofit organizations in California and Minnesota. See her profile.

Karen A. Foss,

Dr. Foss was named a Regents Professor in 2006 and is the associate chair of C&J for 2009-2010. She has been with the University of New Mexico since 1993. She is a former C&J chair, former director of graduate studies at C&J, and former director of Women Studies at UNM. In 2005, she received the Gender Scholar of the Year from the Southern States Communication Association. See her profile and visit the Karen Foss home page.

Miguel Gandert,

Miguel Gandert is a nationally known photographer, his photographs are usually images of New Mexico and its people. You can see some of Miguel's work regarding the pursuit of happiness on the web. His depiction of the yearly pilgrimage of people to the healing earth of Chimayo, N.M., was recently featured at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM. His work appears in his recent collaborative book Nuevo Mexico Profundo Rituals of an Indo-Hispano Homeland. His artwork was displayed recently at the National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico in Albuquerque. See his profile.

Dirk C. Gibson,

Dr. Gibson has long been a national expert on product recalls, and with the publication of two recent books on serial murderers he also has become an expert source for print and broadcast media on the mass communications of serial killers. He teaches in the public relations concentration at C&J. See his profile and visit Dirk Gibson's home page and also his Product Recall Research Group .

Judith Hendry,

Dr. Hendry is the communication undergraduate adviser and chairs the Undergraduate Communication Committee and the C&J Scholarship Committee.  She joined the C&J faculty in 1998.  She is on the editorial board of the Environmental Communication Journal and is past president of the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association.  Her research emphasis is in environmental communication with an emphasis in environmental rhetoric, the public discourse of global warming, and public participation in environmental decision-making.  See her profile and visit Judith Hendry's home page.

Dennis Herrick, Lecturer II

Dennis Herrick is chair of the Undergraduate Journalism and Mass Communication Committee and adviser to journalism and mass comm students for 2009-2010. He joined C&J's full-time faculty in 2001 after teaching part-time for C&J for one semester and for the University of Iowa for two years. He was owner and publisher of a group of weekly newspapers and a shopper in Iowa for 12 years and a newspaper broker for five years. He also was chief of staff for a member of Congress for eight years, and he worked for about 11 years as a daily newspaper reporter. See his profile and visit Dennis Herrick's course sites at his home page.

Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik,

Dr. Lutgen-Sandvik is the Ph.D. adviser for 2009-2010. She was born in Alaska and lived there until moving to Arizona in 2001 for graduate study. Prior to that, she worked in the field of social work where she served as a nonprofit administrator in the fields of substance abuse treatment and women's advocacy. See her profile and visit Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik's home page.

Virginia McDermott,

Dr. McDermott's areas of expertise are interpersonal communication and health communication. Recently, she has focused on stigma reduction efforts addressing perceptions of mental illness. Specifically, she has studied individuals’ preferences for how another should self-disclose a mental illness and how videotaped personal narratives of depression influences people’s perceptions of mental illness.  She, in collaboration with colleagues, has developed a survey to assess New Mexican’s perceptions of and preferred interactions with people with a variety of behavioral health issues.  The results of this survey will be used to inform a stigma reduction campaign. See her profile.

Sara L. McKinnon, Visiting Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2008
Office: Room 237

Dr. McKinnon focuses her research on the communicative experiences of refugees and asylum seekers in the United States. Recently, she has examined the legal barriers present for women making gender-related claims to political asylum in the United States. She taught intercultural and communication theory classes for a year at C&J as a part-time instructor before being appointed visiting assistant professor in the fall of 2009. See her profile and visit Dr. McKinnon's home page.

Tema O. Milstein,

Dr. Milstein's teaching and research interests are in culture and
communication, critical cultural inquiry, and environmental
communication. She has more than a dozen years of journalism experience as a reporter and editor in daily, weekly, and monthly print media, and has lived in the Middle East and Asia. See her home page or her profile.

John G. Oetzel,

Dr. Oetzel is chair of the Department of Communication and Journalism. He is working on two federally funded research projects with professors in public health. He teaches courses in intercultural, health, organizational communication, and research methods. See his profile or visit John Oetzel's home page.

Saumya Pant,

Dr. Pant joined C&J in the autumn of 2008 and teaches communication classes. Her research is in the intersection of gender and communication with a special interest in how subaltern counterpublics are created and maintained. While teaching methods and theory classes for C&J, she will also be teaching for the Women Studies Program. There, her focus will be on Third World Feminism and Globalization. See Dr. Pant's profile.

Nagesh Rao,

Dr. Rao teaches communication courses. His research is in the intersection of culture and health, with a special interest in how our objective and subjective culture shape our health beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, and vice versa. He joined the C&J faculty in the autumn of 2008. See his profile.

Ilia Rodríguez,

Dr. Rodríguez is on sabbatical for the 2009-2010 academic year. She teaches courses in journalism, media studies and international communication, and she has worked as a journalist for newspapers and Latino publications in Puerto Rico, California, Louisiana and Minnesota. She joined the C&J faculty in 2003. See her profile.

Richard Schaefer,

Dr. Schaefer is on sabbatical for the 2009-2010 academic year. He is a former broadcast journalist and a writer of interactive videodisks. His teaching and research interests include digital journalistic technologies, television production practices, information technology policy and the visual aspects of communication, as well as immigration issues. See his profile and visit Richard Schaefer's home page.

Jan Schuetz,

Dr. Schuetz is the author of several books. She teaches C&J 500 and serves on a number of committees. See her profile.

Janet Shiver, Lecturer II

Ph.D., University of New Mexico
Office: Room 218, 505-277-2158

Dr. Shiver teaches classes in public speaking and organizational communication and is the director of all the department's scores of public speaking classes. She taught part-time for C&J for three years prior to joining the full-time faculty in 2007. She is owner of Shiver Group, Inc., a business consulting firm. Dr. Shiver worked in Arizona and New Mexico as a business consultant and organization development consultant for more than 12 years. See her profile.

Olaf Werder, Associate Professor

Ph.D., University of Florida, 2002
Office: Room 230

Dr. Werder’s teaching and research interests are in advertising, mass communication, health communication, social marketing, and research methods. He is currently working on a federally funded research project with investigators in family medicine. He has 10 years of professional experience in advertising and media sales /research with advertising agencies and mass media in Germany, Texas and Minnesota. See his profile and visit Olaf Werder's home page.

Judith White, Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Texas A&M University, 2006
Office: Room 232, 505-277-1859

Dr. White was assistant director of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas A&M University when she obtained her doctorate degree. She came to C&J in 2007 with more than seven years of college-level teaching experience. She teaches public relations and mass communication classes. See her profile.

W. Gill Woodall, Professor

Ph.D., University of Florida, 1978
Office: Room 222, 505-277-2184

Dr. Woodall is a tenured faculty member of the department but devotes all of his time to funded research at the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions (CASAA), a comprehensive research center focused on all aspects of addiction science at UNM. His expertise has focused on health communication, research design and implementation, and nonverbal communication. He has applied this expertise to prevention programs in alcohol and substance abuse in New Mexico and elsewhere. He is a senior research scientist at CASAA and also has served as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health for the past 17 years. See his profile .