Professors Koch, Sandoz, and West Honored at NCA
Professors Isaac West, John Koch, and ML Sandoz were honored with awards at the National Communication Association’s annual convention.
Professor West was presented with the Randy Majors Award, which recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender scholarship in Communication Studies. The award is named for Randy Majors, who was one of the founders of NCA’s Caucus on LGBTQ Concerns. The Caucus was started in 1978 and formally recognized by NCA in 1997. The award is funded through the donations of Caucus members, most significantly through the generosity of Professor R. Jeffrey Ringer, who donated the proceeds of his edited book, Queer Words, Queer Images, which was published in 1994.
Professors Koch and Sandoz were awarded the inaugural Rhetorical and Communication Theory (RCT) Fellowship from the RCT division of the National Communication Association. The fellowship is intended to highlight “innovative, exemplary, and/or socially significant work in rhetorical and communication theory.” Professors Sandoz and Koch, along with their co-submitter Professor Justin Eckstein (Associate Professor of Communication at Pacific Lutheran), won for their work on Vanderbilt’s Civil Discourse Lab. Nominees were asked to demonstrate the lasting impact of rhetorical and communication theory on the discipline and a community outside of the field. This included an explanation of how nominees engaged underrepresented communities in the implementation and impact of their project. The Civil Discourse Lab is designed to be both a pedagogical tool and a cultural intervention that transforms debate from a competitive spectacle into a participatory, student-centered ritual that involves entire classrooms and the broader campus community.