Rate My Professor Kathleen McConnell

Kathleen McConnell is Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Culture from Indiana University (2008), an M.A. in Popular Culture from Bowling Green State University, and a B.A. from The Evergreen State College. At SJSU, McConnell teaches classes in advocacy, rhetoric, argumentation, and special topics courses on the tropes that rotate the college experience. Her career includes serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Review of Communication from 2020 to 2022 and Chair of the Accreditation Review Committee. She collaborated with City Innovate STIR Labs in 2021 on a career advancement program for the City of Detroit Office of Talent Development and contributes as an MTI Research Associate, including work on workforce development for the transportation industry.

McConnell's research specializations include the future of higher education, currents of academic life, cultural theory, feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and history of technology. Her current work explores non-degree career technical education in topics like drinking water systems and supply chains, drawing on queer, feminist, and antiracist discussions of design and affect to examine learning to repair infrastructure. She authored the monograph Advocating Heightened Education: Seeing and Inventing Academic Possibilities (Lexington Books, 2020), which challenges reform efforts detaching education from campus infrastructure through ethnographic and archival analysis of two campuses. Key publications include "The Intercultural Questions at the Center of a Critical Reclamation of the University" (2023), "Fear of etiolation in the age of professional passion" (2018), "Labored speech: reconsidering how communication studies works" (2018), "Look to our campuses for focus and inspiration" (2017), "Imbalances and Inequities: The Structure of Inquiry and Its Place in Rhetorical Studies" (2015), and "Of Careers and Curricula Vitae: Losing Track of Academic Professionalism" (2011). McConnell received the College of Social Sciences Meritorious Service Award in 2021.