The Professor As Scholar

Ringo Ma
State University of New York College at Fredonia

Abstract

Professor Donald E. Williams has demonstrated distinguished scholarship in communication studies over the past four decades. In this essay, the unique characteristics of his scholarly activities are summarized as a combined force of knowledge, enthusiasm and experience, a never-ending spirit of inquiry, and his openness to multiple perspectives. The three characteristics explain why he could integrate rhetorical criticism and intercultural communication in his research and justify why his research is usually ground-breaking and heuristic.

Although different cultures vary in their views toward education, there is at least one phenomenon in higher education that seems to be universal--students complain about teachers. On college campuses, undergraduate students complain about their professors' teaching. Graduate students, on the other hand, complain about their professors' scholarship as well as teaching. Very often do students in PhD programs criticize their advisors as being too narrow and old in research perspective and take research credit from their students. Some even describe their graduate school days as a dark age in their life in which they spent more time making their dissertation fit their advisor's appetite rather than engaging in scholarly activities. However, none of these complaints applied to the chair of my dissertation committee--Professor Donald E. Williams. My dissertation research was empirical in nature and heavily quantitative while Professor Williams's research interest is primarily rhetorical criticism. He was very helpful but open to my approach and listened to my reasoning without presumption. When my dissertation was changed to a condensed form and submitted to a special issue of The Southern Communication Journal on "Patterns of Intracultural Communication," he declined my offer to include his name as the second author. He simply did not want to take any credit from me. The manuscript was then very competitively selected and his name is only mentioned as my dissertation advisor (Ma, 1991). What a different experience I had in graduate school from many others!

What I have experienced may not remain very surprising after a careful analysis of Professor Williams as a scholar is presented. The purpose of this paper is to explain why I think Professor Williams is a model scholar on the basis of my experience as his student and as a consumer of his research in the academic community. More specifically, the following unique characteristics of his scholarly work and activity will be introduced: (a) combined force of knowledge, enthusiasm and experience, (b) never-ending spirit of inquiry, and (c) openness to multiple perspectives.

Professor Williams's two areas of expertise are rhetorical criticism and intercultural communication. It takes a special effort to integrate the two in research. To many communication researchers the two are different in some basic assumptions. Rhetoric criticism reflects a Western tradition of argumentation, while intercultural communication encourages empathy. In spite of the potential difference in orientation, they both require a combination of knowledge, enthusiasm and experience to complete the task in hand. To analyze the rhetoric of Andrew D. White (Williams, 1961a) and Charles G. Dawes (Williams, 1962), for example, a clear understanding of the social milieu in which the rhetoric was practiced was required. The critic also had to be highly enthusiastic about the topic of investigation. Most people would not want to touch the important issue of the Ku Klux Klan as he did (e.g., Williams, 1961b) because it is too sensitive. In addition, it would be very helpful if the critic had experienced and involved himself or herself in similar rhetorical situations. Professor Williams is both a born and well-trained rhetorician and his enthusiasm in rhetorical studies is by no means regulated only by a motive to publish.

Professor Williams's scholarly work in intercultural communication is also a reflection of his knowledge, enthusiasm and experience. He has held teaching or lecturing appointments in 12 nations on six continents. Extended appointments were held in The Netherlands, England, The People's Republic of China, and Zimbabwe. His deep understanding of culture and communication can be exemplified by an article, "Probing cultural implications of war-related victimization in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and Serbia" (Williams, 1995), included in the book, Communication in Eastern Europe: The role of history, culture, and media in contemporary conflicts. According to the editor of the book, Professor Fred L. Casmir, Williams's chapter stands for understanding because it is a well-documented and carefully reasoned study on human rights issues. His scholarship also integrates theories with practice. For example, his own intercultural teaching experience is incorporated in an article addressing what constitutes intercultural communication teaching (Williams, 1982). One year when he was on sabbatical leave, I had the opportunity of using his office for several months. I was impressed with both the quantity and quality of the materials he collected for his research, including some questionnaires he collected in The Netherlands and The People's Republic of China. He maintained a very busy schedule in his office everyday and never ceased to do research in a library cubicle reserved for him.

Scholars are knowledgeable about their field, but in Professor Williams's case, it is the combined force of knowledge, enthusiasm and experience that has created an outstanding and respected scholar. His scholarship is for truth, justice, and love of human beings, rather than for promotion and publication.

In order to understand Professor Williams's scholarly accomplishments, his enthusiasm for research needs to be further addressed. Any graduate student who has taken at least one course with Professor Williams knows his never-ending spirit of inquiry. He posed endless questions to help students learn the subject being discussed. He also encouraged students to ask questions. A large portion of learning in his class was through inquiries. In his teaching and research, he could also make an extra trip to the library to find the answer to a seemingly trivial question.

A memorable experience associated with my teaching of public speaking at the University of Florida was the inclusion of a "speech of inquiry" in a junior-level public speaking course when Professor Williams was the director for the teaching of the course. Both students and instructors had problems conceptualizing this speech assignment at the beginning. Nothing could be found about this type of speech in any textbook. However, Professor Williams explained to us how important this assignment is to students who live in a pluralistic society. He had the ambition to transform a disjunctive tradition in our public speaking classroom that had lasted for many decades into a globally oriented learning experience for students.

The most valuable research tool that I learned from Professor Williams is how to impose questions upon a phenomenon under investigation. On each of the papers I submitted to him in various courses, the margins were filled with questions in blue ink when it was returned. He might or might not have an answer for these questions, but he encouraged his students to think about them.

Professor Williams's never-ending spirit of inquiry constitutes a unique style of research. Critical thinking is either directly reflected in the theme of his essay (e.g., Williams, 1995) or indirectly implied in the study (e.g., Williams, 1955, 1959). His inquiry makes his research carry both heuristic and pedagogical values. The questions he posed offer suggestions for future research and teaching. In addition, it often offers an opportunity for the reader to re-think some ontological issues, such as what is intercultural communication and what constitutes teaching of intercultural communication.

Closely tied to his spirit of inquiry, Professor Williams's openness to multiple perspectives is another key to his scholarly excellence. In order to encourage his students to "think pluralistically" and take multiple perspectives to view a complex issue, he introduced the "speech of inquiry" to the public speaking course. Instead of taking a position on a chosen issue, students were required to engage in pluralistic thinking and as a public speaker, they were expected to urge their audience to take multiple perspectives.

Professor Williams has been involved in church affairs for many years. Many people tend to associate those involved in church affairs with intolerance of "other" views. They would be surprised to find Professor Williams's approach to managing spiritual life in his community was very different. He brought strong advocates of other religions to his church as guest speakers. He was not afraid of any conversion that might take place after being exposed to "other" views. The real concern he had was whether the folks in his community had thought carefully and thoroughly about their faith. In other words, his openness to multiple perspectives is "another" way, or a more proactive way, to seek truth and establish faith.

Professor Williams was open and receptive to research ideas. I invited him to be the chair of my dissertation committee because of his knowledge and experience in intercultural communication. He was not trained to apply quantitative methods in research. My research design, however, required extensive statistical analysis. I did not think it would be a problem from the very beginning not only because there was a statistician on the committee, but also because I had confidence in Professor Williams's openness. As time went by, it proved to be the right choice. He gave me invaluable guidance and assistance during the process of my dissertation research. On the other hand, because of his openness he was always willing to listen to me on the statistical methods applied in the dissertation. It was indeed a very pleasant and rewarding experience working with such an open-minded scholar.

Professor Donald E. Williams has demonstrated distinguished scholarship in communication studies over the past four decades. His dedication in research has gone far beyond a worldly motive for meeting the requirements for promotion. In this essay, the unique characteristics of his scholarly activities are summarized as the following: a combined force of knowledge, enthusiasm and experience, a never-ending spirit of inquiry, and his openness to multiple perspectives. The three characteristics explain why he could easily be transformed into a pioneer in intercultural communication studies from a "hard-line" rhetorician in late 1970s. They also justify why his research is usually ground-breaking and heuristic.

I realize the limitation of this essay in scope and details as related to Professor Williams's scholarship, and have no intention to claim this introduction to be inclusive of his scholarly accomplishments. I do, however, appreciate the honor of being selected to represent his many students. In Chinese, his "peaches and plums [students] are all over the world," we have yet to hear from many others to paint a more complete picture of his scholarship.

Ma, R. (1990). An exploratory study of discontented responses in American and Chinese relationships. The Southern Communication Journal, 55, 305-318.

Williams, D. E. (1955). Group discussion and argumentation in legal education. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 41, 397-401.

Williams, D. E. (1959). American studies and the study of public address. The Speech Teacher, 8, 204-210.

Williams, D. E. (1961a). Andrew D. White: Spokesman for the free university. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 47, 133-142.

Williams, D. E. (1961b). Protest under the cross: The Ku Klux Klan presents its case to the public. Southern Speech Journal, 27, 43-55.

Williams, D. E. (1962). Charles G. Dawes: The Conscience of Normalcy. Speech Monographs, 29, 23-31.

Williams, D. E. (1982). Implementing content through methods in teaching intercultural communication. Southern Speech Journal, 47, 269-276.

Williams, D. E. (1995). Probing cultural implications of war-related victimization in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. In F. L. Casmir (Ed.), Communication in Eastern Europe: The role of history, culture, and media in contemporary conflicts (pp. 277-311). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.