Karyn Campbell, PhD

"I love to see the progression students make from freshman to senior year. It’s especially exciting to see those students who started as nondescript seeds, fall into the soil and bloom into beautiful plants after four years. It is my privilege to watch students grow into masterful storytellers and bring that gift to the world after they graduate."

• Teaching & Education

  You will learn with me when taking courses in the digital media area such as writing, graphic communication, and the mass media ethics course taken by all mass communication majors. Also, I advise the student website, The Vision and The Vision [student] Magazine.

  Degrees

  • BA, Journalism, Valparaiso University
  • MA, Journalism, University of South Carolina.
  • PhD, Rhetorics, Communication & Information Design, Clemson University
• Professional Experience

  My experiences includes being an award-winning Lifestyle editor at the Seneca [S.C.] journal in the early 1980s and doing public relations at a South Carolina Christian university for several years.

  After earning my master’s degree, I moved to Dayton Ohio where I was the student media coordinator at Wright State University. There, I coached student journalists at an award-winning student newspaper, a popular student radio station, and an award-winning literary magazine. I lived in Japan for seven years, teaching English conversation to students of all ages, learning about cross-cultural communication in real life.

• Selected Publications
  • Panel participant at Carolina Rhetoric Spring Conference, February 2018. Topic: “Enacting Change in Online Pedagogy: Distance Learning Discourse in an Age of Electracy”
  • Review of “Out of Mind” by Michael Burke for the KB Journal, the Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society, Fall 2017
  • In addition to my work at The Seneca Journal, I have written features for in-house publications, the Lancaster [S.C.] News, and for online content organizations.
• Selected Awards Received
  • 1990 – Wright State University Student Government Certificate of Recognition in honor of outstanding service to the student body
  • 1985 – National Newspaper Association Best Family Life Pages, honorable mention
  • 1984 – South Carolina Press Association DeCamp Award for Best Lifestyle Page, honorable mention
• My Story

  Journalism has been my passion since I discovered it by accident while I was in college.  I worked as a news writer and then Lifestyle editor for a few years, but after I became a Christian I felt called to work in ministry so I did public relations for a Christian college. There, I learned that I wanted to be in the classroom with students so I returned to school to get my master’s degree.  I left my beloved South Carolina to go to snowy Ohio where I worked closely with student journalists as an adviser to student media.  God again called on my sense of adventure by providing an opportunity for me to live in Japan for six months.  Those months turned into six years as I taught English conversation to students from age 2 to 72.  When I returned to the United States, I taught English at a South Carolina university and began my own consulting business where I wrote extensively for the web.  After another one-year stint in Japan, God called me back to the United States and North Greenville University where I have had the privilege of coaching student journalists at the student newspaper, yearbook, website and magazine as well as working with students in the classroom. While at NGU, I worked on a Ph.D. and use the cutting-edge philosophy from Clemson’s excellent program while teaching today’s students in new, digital media.

  Favorite Course to Teach: It’s hard to pick a favorite class because I truly do like them all, but I do love advising student media. We have a practicum that students take for credit so I am technically a teacher, but my role is more of an adviser or mentor. It is so rewarding to watch students come in on the first level of the practicum and watch them grow over a couple of years. I especially love seeing students grow into the leadership positions we offer and watch them lead other students who are creating our student website. Our website wins regional and national awards and whenever our students win something, I feel as if my child got a prize in school. I’m so proud of them and the work they put in to make our website the best it can be. Yes, I teach them how to do that and I push them towards excellence, but they do all the hard work. I hope in some small way we are giving the glory to God as we do what He has entrusted to us with the best of our abilities.