UHCL prof wins seat on National Communication Association board
The National Communication Association, which serves and supports scholars and other practitioners in the field of communication, has recently elected University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Senior Lecturer in Communication Andrea Baldwin as vice chair-elect in the organization’s Performance Studies Division.
“I’ve always been active in this organization, even since I was an undergraduate,” Baldwin said. “It’s been a gateway for my career and it’s a great opportunity for networking. I’ve always found great community within this conference. It’s a huge honor to be elected vice chair.”
Baldwin said that for her four-year term as vice chair, she would be leading business division meetings and helping to plan the national conference, particularly for her own division.
“I’ll be helping with curriculum legislation which can be of national importance,” she said. “I’ll be working with people from all over the country, and we will bring up and vote on concerns for the bylaws for the national program.”
Through her work on the legislative assembly, Baldwin said she can become the front face of the division for the country. “My UH-Clear Lake students can benefit from anything that happens in the legislative assembly,” she said. “It will show that UHCL is a place for performance studies. My peers support me; they would not have elected me otherwise. We are on a national stage for performance studies. Many of my former students have gone on to master’s degree programs at well-known universities, so it means that my students will have a recruitment edge.”
Baldwin teaches a popular course entitled Storytelling and Oral Communications and is the advisor of the Storytellers, a student organization that puts on performance-based productions at the university’s Bayou Theater.
“The Storytellers’ aim is to answer a social question through the performance,” Baldwin explained. “Instead of writing a paper or doing a presentation, they use theatrical methodologies to answer the question, which still involves research, investigation and organization. But we use the theater to put it on its feet to explore the answers to the question.”
She added that the Storytellers have traveled to festivals and national conferences, and were also invited as performance artists by Art in Uncommon Places, a nonprofit organization in San Angelo.
For more information about UHCL's Communication program, go online.