Office: CART 244
Phone: 595-2252
E-Mail Address: castor@uwp.edu

Office Hours Spring 2008:

Tuesdays and Thursdays 5-5:50, and by appointment

Spring 2008 classes:

COMM 494-001: Communication Internship, T 2-3:15
COMM 495-001: Senior Seminar, T/Th 3:30-4:45
COMM 495-002: Senior Seminar, T/Th 6-7:15
COMM 499-002: Independent Study, TBA
HUMA 494-001: Humanities Internship, T 2-3:15

Background Information

Ph.D. from the Department of Speech Communication, University of Washington, Seattle, 1999.
Dissertation: "Accounts and Account Vocabularies: The Social Construction of Reality during Decision-Making talk."

M.A. from the Department of Rhetoric and Communication, University of California, Davis, 1993.

B.A.S. from the Department of Rhetoric and Communication and the Department of Biochemistry, University of California, Davis, 1991.

Theresa's research areas are in Organizational Communication, and Language and Social Interaction. She analyzes organizational decision-making using interpretive discourse analytic methods. More specifically, Theresa examines talk during organizational meetings in educational institutions and how that talk contributes to the social construction of reality and the construction of organizational culture.

Theresa was also a 2003-2004 Wisconsin Teaching Fellow, a program sponsored by the UW System and the Office of Professional and Instructional Development. As a Teaching Fellow, she examined student discussion during group exams and the various discursive strategies used by students for constructing knowledge.

Theresa is the advisor to the Parkside Association of Communicators. In 2000-2001, she received the campus' Club Advisor of the Year award for her work in advising PAC. She also advises Communication students seeking internships and teacher education certification in speech communication.

RESEARCH

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Castor, T.R. (forthcoming). Language use during school board meetings: Understanding controversies of and about language. Journal of Business Communication.

Castor, T. R., & Cooren, F. (2006). Organizations as hybrid forms of life: The implications of the selection of human and non-human agents in problem-formulation. Management Communication Quarterly, 19, 570-600.

Castor, T. R. (2005). Their grades are higher, but are they learning?: Examining the impact of cooperative testing on individual learning. MountainRise, 2 (2). Available online at http://facctr.wcu.edu/mountainrise/archive/vol2no2/html/higher_grades.html

Castor, T. R. (2005). Constructing social reality in organizational decision-making: Account vocabularies in a diversity discussion. Management Communication Quarterly, 18, 479-508.

Castor, T. R. (2004). Making student thinking visible by examining discussion during group testing. In M. V. Achacoso, & M.S. Svinicki (Eds.), New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Issue 100: Alternative Strategies for Evaluating Student Learning (pp. 95-99). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Castor, T. R., & Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2004). Capstone as stepping stone. Communication Teacher, 18, 61-64.

Philipsen, G., Aoki, E., Castor, T. R., Coutu, L. M., Covarrubias, P., Jabs, L., Kane, M., & Winchatz, M. R. (1997). Reading Ella Cara Deloria's Waterlily for cultured speech. Iowa Journal of Communication, 29, 31-49.

Other Publications

Castor, T. R. (2005, September). Book review of Learning and motivation in the postsecondary classroom. Teaching Forum: A Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Available online at http://www.uwosh.edu/programs/teachingforum/public_html/?module=displaystory&story_id=636&format=html

Competitively-Selected Conference Papers

Castor, T. R. (2005). Organizational humor as "Practical authorship": The discursive construction of context. Presented at the National Communication Association conference, Boston, MA.

Olson, K., Castor, T. R., Ferrante, K., Hoeft, M., & Johnson, J. (2005). Investigating students' positive and negative metaphors for teaching and learning. Presented at the National Communication Conference, Boston, MA.

Hoeft, M., Ferrante, K., Johnson, J., Olson, K., & Castor, T. R. (2005). Student metaphors for effective and ineffective learning. Presented at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference, 2005, Vancouver, BC.

Castor, T. R., & Cooren, F. (2005). Organizations as hybrid forms of life: The implications of the selection of human and non-human agents in problem-formulation. Presented at the International Communication Association conference, New York.

Castor, T. R. (2005). Their grades are higher, but are they learning? Presented at the Carnegie Foundation Colloquium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Atlanta, GA.

Castor, T. R. (2004). Making sense of a dean's decision during a university budget crisis: Applying action implicative discourse analysis to retrospective sensemaking. Presented at the International Communication Association conference, New Orleans, LA.

Castor, T. R. (2004). Making student thinking visible through group exams: A discourse analytic study of how students construct knowledge. Presented at the Carnegie Foundation Colloquium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, San Diego, CA.

Castor, T. R. (2002). Language use in organizational decision-making: Account vocabularies and the social construction of reality. Presented at the National Communication Association conference, New Orleans, LA.

Castor, T. R. (2000). Discursively constructing organizational culture: Account vocabularies in decision-making talk. Presented at the National Communication Association conference, Seattle, WA.

Castor, T. R. (1999). Account vocabularies: One response to challenges in social constructionist, empirical research. Presented at the National Communication Association conference, Chicago, IL.