In a recent address to our university’s faculty and staff, President David Dockery discussed the importance of “conviction and civility” in our discourse. As a faith-based institution we share certain convictions, but even within that commonality there is still a great deal of diversity, especially as we look at the mixture of Republicans,...

At this point it is pretty difficult to be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo or most any given blog without seeing someone promoting or decrying Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 viral campaign. Valid criticisms have been made about organizational transparency, over simplification of complex issues, slactivism and the implication that U.S. college students must...

The question of how grammatical errors affect sender credibility is not an especially new question nor does it have an unexpected answer. Yes, much to the chagrin of many, grammatical and spelling errors in professional communication, including email, do hurt credibility. But Caleb Carr (University of Oklahoma) and Chad Stefaniak (Oklahoma State University) have...

We can communicate without punctuation. After all the meaning of a sentence is found in the words, not the punctuation. But imbedded in language, punctuation elegantly adds structure to language, simultaneously simplifying and enhancing meaning. Steve Jobs via Apple has done the same thing, punctuating our lives with technology. Outside of face to face encounters,...

It’s a question I hadn’t really pondered until this moment. And now that it has been suggested, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve actually been avoiding the avalanche of 9/11 coverage over the last week. Not because I don’t care, or don’t think it is important to remember, but because I do. I feel in some way, that watching those towers fall over and...