Faculty Biography

Meet the founding father of communication studies at Rollins College.  In 1985, Dr. Greg Gardner came to Rollins College to accomplish two things:  to create a new communication major in the Hamilton Holt School as well as a new minor in the Arts and Sciences program.  Rollins students have reaped the benefits of his pioneering work through the Organizational Communication major in the Holt evening program and the Communication minor in Arts and Sciences day program.  After being the Chair of the Department of Communication for twenty years, Dr. Gardner has recently taken the role of full-time professor in the Holt evening program.  Though he has taught many courses throughout his forty years as a professor, the two main courses he focuses on now are Interpersonal Communication and Senior Seminar.  His teaching style is very interactive.  In his Interpersonal course, he facilitates activities and discussion through film, books, and power point presentations to supplement the students' reading assignments.  In Senior Seminar, students engage in multiple projects and discuss how to better solve communication misunderstandings as citizens using various written sources.

Dr. Gardner's interest in communication studies began early when he became a member of his high school debate team.  His fascination with public speaking and rhetoric carried into his undergraduate studies in college and graduate school at Bowling Green University in Ohio.  Later, his research would lead him to further explore the rhetorical themes of attorneys, preachers, and key speakers throughout American history.  More recently, however, is a project with one of his Rollins colleagues, Dr. John Morrison, which involves surverying the responses of students regarding effective teaching practices in the Communication Department.