Meet Megan Cardwell, a GTA in the Communication Studies department. She studies race, ethnicity, and identity with Dr. Soliz in the Communication Identity Lab. Right now, she’s working on her thesis about family communication and identity between multi-ethnic siblings. She also teaches Business and Professional Communication (COMM 286).
What studies have you worked on, and what methods do you use?
In the communication identity lab, we use a bunch of different methods, so my thesis is qualitative, so I’ve done interviews, transcribed those interviews, so these are interviews with mixed race siblings and how their siblings have affected their identity development if at all. So right now, I’m doing a thematic analysis on that.
How do you feel that the class you teach helps prepare students for post-grad?
We always hear in general that communication skills are a big thing that employers are looking for, so I think that’s important. Also, they have to work in teams for the whole semester, so I think that’s important to learn how you work with people because we make them reflect a lot on how things are going and a lot of the time, we work with people and we do things but we don’t really reflect on them or think about what that means so forcing them to reflect on their experiences is going to be helpful going forward
What do you like most about working with undergraduate students?
I’m a personal connection person, so yes, I’m glad I’m teaching business and professional skills. I’m also glad to have them be exposed to different kinds of people in class and I’m happy about that teamwork element. It’s really important to me that students have a good experience when they’re actually in the classroom talking to each other, making them, every single day, answer a question to get to know each other, and to try to have a little bit of fun because I think that’s also a big part of the classroom experience.
What advice do you give to your students?
I think that I’m a very human person so one of my major takeaways from this class is that people are different from you. You’re going to come into contact with people who are different than you and it’s important to respect other people, and respect their opinions. Part of that does come from that group work and saying just because so and so is a procrastinator doesn’t mean they’re a bad person or a bad worker it just means you have to understand that people are different from you. Sometimes things make you uncomfortable and I think another thing that’s important to me is teaching people to live in that discomfort because it’s a heavy public speaking class and the only way you’re going to get better at working in teams or public speaking is to have to live in that discomfort for a little while. I always want students to have the confidence that this was really uncomfortable for me, but I lived through it.
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