Robert C. Rowland

Robert C. Rowland

Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Communication Studies, University of Kansas

Dr. Rowland's major teaching and research interests are in rhetorical criticism, argumentation, and the public sphere. Dr. Rowland and his debate colleague were the 1976 National Debate Champions for KU. He is a former director of forensics at KU and at Baylor University. Dr. Rowland received the Louise Byrd Award for Graduate Teaching at the Doctoral Hooding ceremony May 2000. He also is a recipient of the William T. Kemper Teaching Fellowship and the Bernard Fink Award for outstanding teaching, and is a two-time HOPE Award finalist. He also has received an Outstanding Service Award from the Kansas Bar Association based on his work in Continuing Legal Education on legal advocacy. In November 2006, he was honored by the National Communication Association with the Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teaching in Higher Education.. He and David Frank of the University of Oregon published book on Israeli-Palestinian rhetoric titled Shared Land/Conflicting Identity (Michigan State University Press) in 2002. The book was honored in 2003 with the Kohrs-Campbell prize in rhetorical criticism. A recent survey of journals ranked him among the fifty most published scholars in the discipline.