Communication Corner Podcast

February 12, 2024

Transcript: 

Natalie Graner:

Welcome, everyone, to the first episode of The Communication Corner, which is our brand new McGraw Hill informative podcast for communication instructors. My name is Natalie Graner, and I am the marketing manager for communication on our McGraw Hill product and marketing team. So just a little bit about me is I currently live in Jasper, Georgia, which if you haven't heard of it before, that's okay, most people haven't. It is a small town in North Georgia that is roughly 50 minutes outside of Atlanta.

So that is where I currently am located. And I have been at McGraw Hill for almost three years now, and part of my role as a marketing manager is I get to work on a lot of exciting new projects for the communication discipline. This podcast is one of them. So I'm so thrilled to not only have the opportunity to launch this, but to partner with three amazing individuals and educators that are launching this podcast along with me and will be The Communication Corner podcast moderators for all upcoming episodes.

So I just want to take a moment to welcome moderators, Kory Floyd, Jeff Child, and Jennifer Foster. So a big welcome to the three of you. Kory, do you want to start us off by just introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about yourself with everybody?

Kory Floyd:

Happy to. So I'm Kory Floyd. I'm a professor of communication at the University of Arizona, and I live in sunny Tucson, Arizona. I've been at the U of A on the faculty since about 2015. And many, many years ago, I was at the U of A as a doctoral student. So I'm one of those who has returned home to where I studied before. I teach in the interpersonal and health communication areas, primarily in relational communication, in psychophysiology, and I have a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. Jennifer, can I toss it over to you?

Jennifer Foster:

Absolutely. I'm Jennifer Foster, and I teach at the University of Central Oklahoma. I am in Oklahoma. I live in the metropolitan area there with my two kiddos and husband. I teach fundamentals of speech, which is our basic speech course, and also presentation techniques, which focuses in on communication and presentation styles in the workplace. I've been a classroom teacher for the past 18 years and teaching communication classes and presentation classes throughout that time. And so I will pass it off to Jeff now.

Jeff Child:

Hey, everyone. My name is Jeff Child, and I am a professor of communication and chair of the Department of Communication at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I just moved the beginning of this academic year, actually in the summer to get adjusted to the wonderful 120 degree heat to Las Vegas from Ohio. I had spent 16 years in Ohio and moved here. It was nice to be able to get rid of both my lawn mower and my snow blower. But my areas of expertise is kind of this blend of personal and mediated communication.

So I study interpersonal and family communication in mediated environment. So I study privacy and disclosure online and how we make the choices to open up or protect what we do and how those processes proceed in terms of breakdowns and regulation of stuff when things don't go as we expect and what the digital mediated world that's ever more present in terms of the kinds of things that we encounter.

I teach here in our personal communication, family communication, mediated communication, calm theory a range of things, but I do less teaching and more administrative work now, which is great. I love the opportunity to mentor and to keep growing faculty and staff. So that's a little bit about me.

Natalie Graner:

Well, wonderful. Thank you all so much for just giving us some insight into yourselves, and I think this is a great segue for all of us to share what this podcast is about and what really inspired each of us to participate in this. So I had mentioned earlier that this is a McGraw Hill informative podcast for communication instructors, but really it's so much more than that.

And this podcast is really meant to be a place of community where various instructors, authors, and subject matter experts will join our moderators, so that is Kory, Jeff, and Jennifer, on upcoming episodes to share practical tips and best practices that other instructors listening can use in the classroom, while also tackling some trending topics that are relevant in today's communication classes.

Now, what really inspired me to start this podcast was hearing from multiple different instructors from across the country that expressed to me that it would be wonderful if McGraw Hill had a podcast that was just for communication instructors where they could hear tips and tricks from what others are doing while teaching communication.

And what also inspired me to create this is podcasts can really forge connections and foster a community, which I think is just so impactful, especially in today's teaching world. Now, starting off with you, Jeff, I'd love to hear from you what really inspired you to participate in this podcast and become a moderator.

Jeff Child:

Sure, yeah. I'm excited to be a part of the moderator team, and I think one of the reasons that I wanted to get involved with this and was happy to join is because many people throughout my career have helped provide strategies and tips and data centered kinds of perspectives on how to do all parts of my job effectively.

And it's great to be at this place and space in my career now where I can help others to have a sense of ways to be effective in the classroom and think about diversity and all the kinds of challenges and topics that we face as educators today so that we might continue to have impact and help students learn and grow in understanding communication is the primary focus of what we're passionate about. So I'm excited to be a part of this. I'll turn it over now to Kory. Kory, do you want to talk about why you were interested in joining the team?

Kory Floyd:

Sure. Yeah, thanks, Jeff. I think one of the best things about being an author has been the opportunity to meet instructors who I wouldn't necessarily get the opportunity to meet and work with and hear from and learn from. And I think Natalie used the word community, and I always come back to that word in my mind when I think about the opportunity to share ideas and to give support. It's just been such a great opportunity over the years for me to get to know so many of the instructors in the field.

And so when the opportunity came to do something for that group, I was eager to be a part of it. Like Jeff, I've benefited so much from help over the years from various mentors and colleagues and peers and leaders. And so the opportunity to do even a small thing that can be of use and be supportive for the instructors in our field, I was 100% on board to be involved in that. Jennifer, how about you?

Jennifer Foster:

Well, I joined the podcast because I have an inability to say no when asked to do something, and especially in instances when I am passionate about the ask, and I think that that's what this is for me. When we talk about communication skills, we know that this is such a vital component to what our students will be doing in their future careers. And so helping move the ball down the road and help instructors facilitate that in their classrooms in a more effective way I think is incredibly important.

I love curriculum mapping and looking at the way that we can be smart about the way that we plan our classrooms and design that instruction to maximize our time, to maximize what we can get out of students, and to help them grow into the communicators that they're going to be in the future. And so I'm excited about this roundtable discussion that we're going to be able to have with instructors from all across the country and to share that so that we are able to incorporate those ideas into our own classrooms and to grow those ideas as we move along.

Natalie Graner:

Great. Well, thank you all so much for sharing because it's great to have you all involved in something like this and to be a part of upcoming episodes, which leads me to talk about the schedule and the release for the podcast episodes. So just to give some background, starting in February and rolling into May, we will have several episodes that we'll be releasing. So each episode will have one of our moderators that will be helping to drive the conversation along with a few guests. So guests will include other instructors, authors, subject matter experts in communication.

Now, as for the topics, we have some exciting content that we will be rolling out this semester. And I don't want to give too much away, but the next episode will be with moderator Jeff Child, and that topic is going to be around building meaningful relationships in an online learning environment. Then we'll have our next one with Kory Floyd on overcoming instructor burnout. Then we will have Jennifer Foster and she's going to talk about teaching persuasion and public speaking.

So that's just a sneak peek of some of the content and topics that are going to be coming soon. And definitely be sure to check your inbox every month because you will be receiving an email that lets you know when a podcast episode has released and where you can go on our McGraw Hill website to find it. Episodes will also be posted on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and Google Play. So there's lots of different options for you to be able to listen to our episodes. So that's just an overview of what we have coming soon.

Now, before we wrap up this episode, I have to ask Kory, Jeff, and Jennifer this question because it is the start of the semester and we all know it can be challenging getting back into the swing of things. And so I'll actually start with Jennifer here for this question. Jennifer, what is your beverage of choice in the morning to help you wake up and start your day, either before heading to campus or maybe teaching classes online?

Jennifer Foster:

So my actual drink of choice right now is tea, but if I could pick whatever it would be calorie-free would be Dr. Pepper. So that's what I would rather it be.

Natalie Graner:

Love it. What about you, Jeff?

Jeff Child:

So for me, I actually have never had coffee. I'm one of those weird people that I love the smell of it, but I've never actually... I've tasted a little bit of it, but I've never enjoyed it. So my beverage of choice to get the caffeine and get the energy going in the morning is Diet Mountain Dew.

Natalie Graner:

Wow! I'm a coffee drinker, so I'll have to definitely give you some good coffee that you'll have to try the next time we connect. Kory, what about you?

Kory Floyd:

Jeff, I thought I knew you. You've never had coffee before. That's amazing.

Jeff Child:

Right? Isn't that a crazy tidbit?

Kory Floyd:

I thought you were a good person. I grew up really very near Seattle, so I've been drinking coffee since I was a wee lad. And yeah, I usually have some coffee in the morning before I head to work, and then I have a coffee machine in my office that gets charged up and going as soon as I arrive. That's how I get going in the morning.

Jeff Child:

Kory, I think you drink enough coffee for the both of us.

Jennifer Foster:

Or for the three of us, because I don't drink coffee either.

Kory Floyd:

That very well could be true. Yes, and I'm happy to do it. I'll take the bullet for that.

Natalie Graner:

Now, Kory, do you drink your coffee with anything like creamer, sugar? How do you drink it?

Kory Floyd:

I am a little bit of half and half usually. No sugar. And if it's the weekend and a very special occasion, maybe a little bit of Baileys.

Natalie Graner:

Love it. Well, thank you all for sharing and hopefully everybody listening learned about what y'all drink to start your day, as well as maybe some new drinks to try. So with that, that is a wrap of our first episode. So thank you to our moderators and thank you to all of the listeners that joined us. We hope to see everyone on the next podcast episode coming soon.