Reynolds College Blog

Heather Walters wins outstanding achievement honors in writing and teaching

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Missouri State University’s Heather Walters recently received two outstanding achievement awards from the National Communication Association.

A senior instructor in the Department of Communication, Media, Journalism and Film, Walters won the association’s Outstanding Teaching Award. She has taught at Missouri State for 27 years.

Moreover, her book, “Understanding the Ethical Concerns of Generative AI: A Practical Guide,” won the Communication Ethics Division’s Book of the Year Award.

“It is always so rewarding to know that the long hours you put into typing ideas, editing and revising had some notable impact on others,” Walters said.

Teaching style uses current events and case studies

Walters developed and currently teaches the department’s AI and Human Communication (COM 310) course. She also teaches Ethical Issues in Communication (COM 313), Media Law & Ethics (MED 581) and Public Relations Theory and Research Methods (COM 219). In addition, she teaches ethical communication and coaches the speech and debate team at Greenwood Laboratory School.

Her teaching style, she said, is “current event and case study intensive.”

“Integrating current event discussion in the classroom helps students translate theory into practice,” she said. “[It helps them] understand why what they are learning in the classroom matters for their everyday life.”

To facilitate learning, Walters created a set of online activities that complement her textbook.

“There are not many of those resources available in this specific discipline,” she said. “I think [the Association] found my teaching style innovative and reflective of sincere effort to bring a discipline like ethics—which is often stereotyped as ‘ancient’—to life for students.”

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Environmental Communication class highlights university’s public affairs mission

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When communication majors began enrolling for Spring 2026 classes, they encountered a new offering: Environmental Communication. Structured as a second block online class, this was the first time Environmental Communication had been offered as part of the communication studies curricula.

The course is another choice within the fully online option of the communication studies program, according to Senior Instructor Jay Howard. Its purpose is to help students understand the role of communication in negotiating the relationship between people and the environment.

Howard, who teaches in the Department of Communication, Media, Journalism and Film, created the class as a special topics course. He was thrilled when 29 students enrolled, a number just a bit over the class limit.

Most of the students were upper level communications majors, Howard said. “But we did have people from other majors as well find their way into the class, which I was happy to see. And if I get to teach the class again, I’d love to continue to expand and have people enrolled from all across the university.”

Consumers of environmental messaging

Throughout the course, Howard stressed to students how all members of a society are “consumers” of environmental communication. While not everyone will become a public official or climate activist, he noted, people engage in and consume environmental communication daily.

“We need to be able to critically evaluate [this communication] and have some tools for knowing whether the messaging coming at us is accurate or not,” Howard said. “See what they’re trying to get us to do, and why, and whose agenda is being served.”

Because environmental issues tend to affect entire communities and societies, not just individuals, the topic itself can have a wide reach and impact.

“It’s big, it crosses boundaries, has all kinds of stakeholders that all have to cooperate,” Howard said. “There’s a collective action problem. And when you’re trying to coordinate action, you have to use communication.”

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