The National Communication Association has selected a paper co-authored by College of Arts and Letters Dean Dr. Gloria Galanes for the 2015 Article of the Year award in the Communication as Social Construction Division.

How are student identities constructed?

Written by Drs. Heather Carmack, of James Madison University, and Galanes, the article, “More than Just Good Grades: Dialectical Tensions in Students’ Construction of a ‘Good Student’ Identity,” was published in the spring 2013 issue of “Qualitative Communication Research.”

Their research explores the dialectical tensions students grapple with as they construct and enact the roles of good and bad students.

It examines three tensions that emerge from students’ focus group discussions of construction and enactment of their student identities: (a) structure and agency, (b) individuation and solidarity, and (c) good-bad student and good-bad person.

These tensions move beyond identifying successful good student strategies and focus on the contradictions negotiated by students as they (re)produce and share behaviors associated with good and bad student identities.

About Galanes

Dean Galanes, also a communication professor, is particularly interested in teaching small group communication, intercultural communication, communication and leadership, research methods and applied research.

She has been able to involve her graduate and undergraduate students in a number of activities that have benefited community organizations.

She was the founding director of the Citizenship and Service-Learning program and served as both acting communication department head and acting dean.