Deanna Dannels Named Associate Dean

Deanna P. Dannels has been named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for Humanities and Social Sciences, effective July 1. Dannels is a professor of communication at NC State.  She takes on the leadership role as Victoria Gallagher, who has served for the last five years, returns to the Department of Communication to pursue her scholarship, teaching and mentoring.

As associate dean, Dannels will work to support the college’s intellectual community through advancing undergraduate and graduate programs, facilitating disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship, supporting diversity initiatives for graduate and undergraduate students and promoting educational experiences that contribute to the academic success, professional advancement and personal development of undergraduate and graduate students.

“Deanna has the scholarly grounding and the practical administrative experience to take on the challenges of this critical role for the college,” says Dean Jeff Braden. “We welcome her and look forward to working alongside her for the benefit of our undergraduate and graduate students and programs.”

Dannels’ administrative experience includes serving as the director of Communication 110 (Introduction to Public Speaking) in the Department of Communication. She also served as director of her department’s Master’s of Science program for the past three years, and as director of graduate teaching assistant development for the last 14 years. Over the past year, Dannels served in an administrative fellowship in the college.

She has served as associate director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program at NC State for the last 16 years. The CWSP is a campus-wide, outcome-driven effort to provide students with writing and speaking experiences that improve competence and learning in professional, academic and civic contexts.

Dannels earned her doctoral degree in communication in 1999 from the University of Utah. Her current research explores theoretical and curricular protocols for teacher training and development, as well as frameworks for designing, implementing and assessing oral communication across the disciplines. She has published widely in areas of teaching and learning, teacher development and training, design and engineering education, business and technical communication, and oral communication genres. Her recent book is titled Eight Essential Questions Teachers Ask: A Guidebook for Communicating with Students (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Dannels has won a number of teaching and research awards, including the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Distinguished Graduate Professor Award (2015). She was the college’s nominee for the Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014. She received the NC State University Outstanding Teacher Award (2010), and the award for the National Council of Teachers of English Best Article on Pedagogy or Curriculum in Technical or Scientific Communication (2010).