Communication Professor Wins Early Career Teaching Award

University Relations

Matthew Spialek

Matthew Spialek, assistant professor and undergraduate director in the Department of Communication in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, was recently recognized with the Southern States Communication Association Dwight L. Freshley Outstanding New Teacher Award.

The award is presented annually to one faculty member who has demonstrated teaching excellence within the first five years of their career.

Since joining the faculty in 2016, Spialek has taught nearly 1,000 students in disaster communication, research methods and community resilience courses, and he directed 10 undergraduate and graduate independent studies and eight M.A. thesis and capstone projects.

In nominating Spialek for this award, Stephanie Schulte, chair of the Department of Communication, wrote, "He is a leader in and outside of the classroom, a talented instructor and a professor who cares deeply about his students' success. In five years, he has already made an immensely positive impact on our students, our faculty, our curriculum and the community outside the university."

Committed to the land-grant mission, Spialek has developed courses and directed projects that encourage students to apply their communication skills to serve communities across the state of Arkansas. With his guidance, students have developed Human Library events at the Fayetteville Public Library, collaborated with the Washington County Community Resilience Coalition, and created a community-focused podcast for residents of Searcy.

One of the students enrolled in Spialek's civic-focused courses was Shawn Evans. In his letter of support, Evans wrote, "At the end of his Community Resilience course, we each had to design a comprehensive communication intervention for an underserved county here in Arkansas, and it was an amazing opportunity to critically and creatively put our learning into something very real and highly relevant. Learning from him inspired me to pursue communication scholarship as a profession, and if I were to choose a single term to describe his teaching, I would call it transformative."

Spialek also encourages students to work with him on research projects. Specifically, he has invited graduate students to co-author work with him in some of the communication discipline's most prestigious journals, including Communication Monographs and the Journal of Health Communication. He also encourages students to submit their work to conferences and has presented with students at numerous annual meetings including the International Communication Association in Prague, Czech Republic.

About the Southern States Communication Association: SSCA's "purpose is to promote the study, criticism, research, teaching, and application of the artistic, humanistic, and scientific principles of communication. SSCA, a not-for-profit organization, exists for educational, scientific, and literary purposes only." For more information, visit ssca.net.