Departmental News
S. Parry-Giles Receives NCA Grant to "Advance the Discipline"
Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles has received an NCA Finance Board grant to "advance the discipline." The grant, amounting to $5,000, is a new initiative of the National Communication Association and is awarded on a one-time only basis.
Parry-Giles received the award on behalf of the Voices of Democracy (VOD) project.
VOD promotes the study of great speeches and public debates in the humanities undergraduate classroom. The project is designed to provide reliable, authenticated primary texts and contextual and interpretive materials under seven deliberative topics: Citizenship, Civil Rights, Freedom of Speech, Religion and Public Life, Social and Economic Justice, U.S. Internationalism, and War and Peace. In the process of reinvigorating the humanistic study of U.S. oratory, the Voices of Democracy project aims to foster understanding of the nation's principles and history and to promote civic engagement among today's undergraduate students. Voices of Democracy represents a collaborative and interdisciplinary project involving scholars from Baylor University, Penn State University, and University of Maryland, College Park.
The goal of the NCA grant program is to support projects that are very likely to advance the discipline. For example, proposals might focus upon publicizing the research to a wider audience, mentoring newcomers into the discipline, retaining NCA members diversifying or internationalizing the discipline.
NCA received 18 proposals for this grant program and selected five to receive the grant.
