Rate My Professor Richard Besel

Richard Besel, Ph.D., serves as Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Director of the School of Communications at Grand Valley State University. He joined GVSU in 2018 after a distinguished career at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he was Professor and Chair of the Communication Studies Department, as well as Director of the Science, Technology, and Society program and the Interdisciplinary Studies in the Liberal Arts program. Besel holds a Ph.D. in Communication (Rhetoric) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2007), an M.A. in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2001), and a B.A. in Speech Communication and Political Science from North Central College (1999). His dissertation, "Communicating Climate Change: Climate Rhetorics and Discursive Tipping Points in United States Global Warming Science and Public Policy," laid the foundation for his scholarly focus.

Besel's research interests encompass rhetorical theory, history, and criticism; environmental communication; science communication; climate change; media studies; and political communication. He has co-edited two influential books: Green Voices: Defending Nature and the Environment in American Civic Discourse (2016, SUNY Press, with Bernard K. Duffy) and Performance on Behalf of the Environment (2014, Lexington Books, with Jnan Blau). Notable peer-reviewed articles include "Opening the 'Black Box' of Climate Change Science: Actor-Network Theory and Rhetorical Practice in Scientific Controversies" (2011, Southern Communication Journal, 95 citations), "Accommodating Climate Change Science: James Hansen and the Rhetorical/Political Emergence of Global Warming" (2013, Science in Context), "Words That (Don’t) Matter: An Exploratory Study of Four Climate Change Names in Environmental Discourse" (2013, Applied Environmental Education & Communication), and "Prolepsis and the Environmental Rhetoric of Congressional Politics: Defeating the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003" (2012, Environmental Communication). At Cal Poly, he received the Teacher of the Year award (2010), California Faculty Association’s Distinguished Educator Award (2010), Richard K. Simon Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship (2012), and Early Career Award for Achievement in Teaching (2016). Besel is a past president of the National Communication Association’s Environmental Communication Division and founded GVSU's Speech and Debate Team in 2019. His scholarship contributes significantly to understanding rhetorical strategies in environmental and scientific discourses.