BA Communication Studies

Program Details

• Live What You Learn

  • Contribute to the college newspaper and website, The New Englander, practicing and honing design, editing, photo, public relations and advertising, social media, and writing skills. The newspaper, in a broadsheet format, comes out at the end of each semester and in special editions, and the website is continually updated with articles shared via social media. A bi-weekly student-focused digital zine is also produced and shared with the community.
  • Practice a variety of on-air and behind-the-scenes audio production and broadcasting skills at WNEC, the College’s radio station. WNEC is run by students with internships and supported by faculty, staff, and passionate WNEC alumni. Students create studio-based shows and May broadcast remote events, including play-by-play announcing for NEC sports.
  • All students majoring in Communication Studies either get internships, often in nearby Concord or Manchester and set up by our Career and Life Planning office, or take an on-campus Practical Experience course.
  • If you are interested in public relations and advertising, project opportunities include promotional work for campus organizations, like NEC Athletics, as well as gathering spaces like the campus pub. Students also promote events and do public relations work for their own (hypothetical or real) small business or nonprofit. Many get internships for a variety of non-profit and for-profit organizations.

• Career Opportunities

  • Public Relations
  • Advertising
  • Nonprofit Advocacy
  • Journalism—newspaper, magazine
  • Radio production
  • Social Media
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Sales

Faculty

• Andrew Morgan

  Professor of Creative Writing
  Office: Spaulding 301, Henniker Campus
  Phone: 603.428.2349
  Email amorgan@nec.edu

  Awards
  NEC Kilgore Faculty of the Year, 2019

  Educational Background
  MFA in Poetry, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  BA in English/Writing, Plymouth State College

  Bio
  Andrew Morgan is a professor, writer, editor, and volunteer whose recent work can be found in magazines such as Conduit, Stride, Fairy Tale Review, Pleiades, Divine Magnet, Post Road, and New World Writing. He is the recipient of a Slovenian Writer’s Association Fellowship, which sponsored a month-long writing residency in the country’s capital city of Ljubljana and currently teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate Creative Writing programs at NEC. His first book, Month of Big Hands, was published by Natural History Press in 2013.

• Bryan Partridge

  Professor, Writing
  Phone: 603.428.2388
  Email: bpartridge@nec.edu

  Educational Background
  PhD in Humanities from Union Institute and University
  MA in Creative Writing, Dartmouth College
  BA, The College of Wooster

  Research Interests

  • Nature writing
  • Travel writing
  • School climate
  • Choice theory

  Bio
  Bryan Partridge came to NEC in 2004 as the first professional mentor in NEC’s Mentoring program. After three years of developing the program, Bryan transitioned to an assistant professor in the Writing Department. Bryan has been a professor for 17 years and spent three academic years revamping and overseeing the Composition Program. He has also led students on Study Away trips to places like Cuba, India, Australia, the Galapagos Islands, Patagonia, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras.

  His professional career outside of academia includes doing extensive education consulting for the Center for School Climate and Learning—helping educators develop and implement data-driven action plans to improve school climate, prevent bullying and school violence, reduce dropouts, and re-engage disengaged learners. Bryan’s literary passions are travel and nature writing, but he also loves to write fiction and creative nonfiction.

  Outside of professional interests, he travels widely, spends weeks on New England’s lakes and hiking trails, writes, gardens, and enjoys living with his wife, Kt, and his family in Etna, New Hampshire.

• James Johnson

  Visiting Assistant Professor of First-Year Writing
  Office: CEI 210B, Henniker Campus
  Phone: 603.428.2232
  Email: jljohnson@nec.edu

  Achievements
  Dissertation Sympathy for the Devil: Thawing the Ego and Fostering Empathy through a Theory of Lacanian Reader-response, nominated for 2018 Marvin B. Sussman Award

  Educational Background
  PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies, Union Institute & University
  MA in English Literature, Rutgers University
  BA in English Literature, Temple University

  Research Interests

  • Literature and empathy
  • Literature and linguistics
  • Comparative literature
  • Modern literature
  • Psychoanalytic and Lacanian Literary Criticism

  Bio
  Better known to family, friends, and students as JJ, James came to New England College after moving from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he taught at the University of the Sciences of Philadelphia. Having attended NEC for a short while, he fell in love with Henniker years ago and always planned to return.

  JJ teaches in NEC’s first-year writing program where he’s passionate about cultivating students’ writing, researching, and critical-thinking skills. His teaching philosophy focuses on individualized attention and meeting writing students where they are in order to help them embrace their unique literary voice. While at NEC, he has taught various literature courses, worked in academic support as a tutor, and been involved in initiatives such as the first-year learning-living community, which through a focus on experiential learning, aimed to bridge the gap between academic concepts in the classroom and their pragmatic significance outside classroom walls.

  His 2018 dissertation uses a psychoanalytic lens in order to explore the connection between the literary aesthetic and empathy and how empathic identification for traditionally marginalized groups can mitigate societal ills. He has even developed a course at NEC around his doctoral research in which students read, research, discuss, and write about the critical role empathy plays in a civic environment based upon democratic values.

  Although not particularly good at any single one of them, JJ plays a dozen or so instruments. He lives in Henniker with his partner, Melody, and their nine-pound shih tzu, Olive, who never leaves his side.

• Mark Rowland

  Associate Professor/Distance Services and Instruction Librarian
  Phone: 603.428.2352
  Email: mrowland@nec.edu

  Educational Background
  MLIS, McGill University
  BA in English, Penn State University

• William Homestead

  Associate Professor, Communication Studies
  Office: Spaulding 302, Henniker Campus
  Phone: 603.428.2336
  Email: whomestead@nec.edu

  Recent Press
  Books:

  • Not Till We Are Lost: Teaching and Learning in an Age of Climate Crisis: Thoreau, Education, and Spiritual Transformation (work-in-progress)
  • An Ecology of Communication: Response and Responsibility in an Age of Ecocrisis, Lexington Books, 2021
  • An Ecology of Communication: Response and Responsibility in an Age of Ecocrisis, 9781793618146 (rowman.com)
  • The Path of My Soul: Journey to the Center of Self, Acropolis Books, 1999

  Book Anthologies:
  “The Language that All Things Speak: Thoreau and the Voice of Nature,” Voice and Environmental Communication, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

  Journal Editor:
  Guest Editor, Special Edition on “Educating for Ecological Sustainability,” Ometeca, 2010

  Educational Background
  MA in Communication Studies, University of Montana
  MS in Environmental Studies, University of Montana
  MFA in Creative Writing, Goddard College
  BA in Communication Studies, Rutgers University

  Research Interests

  • Environmental communication
  • Intrapersonal communication/spirituality
  • Ecopsychology/ecophilosophy

  Bio
  William Homestead came to New England College in 2005 after stints at Purdue University and the University of Montana and teaches a wide range of courses, including Freedom of Speech, Advertising: History and Criticism, Principles of Public Relations, and The Voice of Nature. He also teaches journalism courses, and he is advisor for The New Englander, the student newspaper/website.

  Homestead has a long association with the Ometeca Institute, a nonprofit devoted to the integration of the sciences and the humanities. His work with Ometeca—along with his interdisciplinary degrees, study with a spiritual teacher, and hiking experiences—informs his teaching and writing. He is a member of the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA), the National Communication Association (NCA), and The Thoreau Society.

  Homestead’s pedagogical approach encourages learning in three interrelated areas—the development of a critical, creative, and eco-social awareness—and he has been teaching college students for over 20 years. He loves sports, played tennis in high school and college, and follows New York sports teams (the Mets, Nets, and Giants); his sports knowledge comes in handy when teaching Sports Communication.

  He lives in Vermont and spends much time walking in the woods with his dog, Snoopy, who was named by his three children.

Degree Requirements