Acknowledgments

A book may come in a flash of insight or moment of inspiration. Introduction to Public Speaking: An Inductive Approach is not that book. Rather, this volume draws on a lifetime of personal and professional experience.

Where to begin? Parents who encouraged a love of learning. Weekend nights playing Scrabble with my grandparents. Growing up in a city, Washington, D.C., where rhetoric is the stuff of life. The college statistics course I couldn’t pass, forcing me to change my major from economics to my real love: language and literature. Finding my voice as I read bedtime stories to my children and sang in the choir. My first career in corporate communications and broadcasting. The recession that pushed me in midlife to go for the Ph.D. and start a new career in academia, where I discovered a love of teaching and scholarship.

This book has its particular genesis in a chain of events. As a graduate instructor, I cut my pedagogical teeth on the basic course in public speaking. Then an early research project plunged me into the scholarship of teaching and learning. Next, I joined my present institution as it converted from an upper level to a four-year university. My task was to create the basic course in public speaking for an institution that was launching a general education curriculum for the first time. Starting from scratch at a Hispanic-serving regional public university, I could experiment freely in reaching students who were more diverse, but also less prepared, than those I had taught at my alma mater.

As my ideas coalesced, the seeds for Introduction to Public Speaking: An Inductive Approach were planted. But with my tenure clock running, should I divert the time to a textbook? My dean at the time, Jeffrey Di Leo, became a valued mentor who encouraged me to move ahead. My first taste of textbook writing then came at the invitation of Jason Wrench to coauthor, with Narissra Punyanunt-Carter, a new textbook, Organizational Communication: Theory, Research, and Practice. That project introduced me to the textbook genre and to FlatWorld as a publisher. And though Jason is lead author on a fine public speaking text of his own, he graciously gave me his blessing to pursue my own project. From there, FlatWorld’s Sean Wakely caught my vision for a text based on an inductive pedagogy. With unflagging encouragement, he guided me through the multiyear process of initial proposal, writing, review, and production.

Others I wish to thank include the FlatWorld peer reviewers who critiqued the manuscript and offered helpful input. My many professional colleagues, at my institution and in the world of communication scholarship, are constant sources of encouragement and exchange. Most of all, my gratitude goes to my wife Donna. At a season of life when people often expect to be settled, she partnered with me on a new journey, taking our adventure together with a whole heart. Her love and spirit are the wings to my words.

Finally, I would like to thank to the following individuals who reviewed the text and whose contributions were invaluable in shaping the final product: