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Alan Goodboy

Alan Goodboy

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Alan Goodboy Profile.

Alan with his son at Cooper's Rock.


Alan says he enjoys the social science scholarship of understanding competent message design.


“My teaching style is focused around relevance and translating scholarship into meaningful practice.”

“I think teaching with relevance is important for students. They benefit most when they can apply what they learn in Communication Studies courses in their daily lives.”

“I want my students to be able to use what they learn and then assess if their knowledge has improved their personal or professional lives.”

Goodboy says one big change in the field is that students have become more active on social media during the past five years.


“The Communication Studies discipline conducts excellent scholarship on social media use and publishes this scholarship in our journals.”

“Our online program has courses on social media and its importance in contemporary society.”

Q & A


Technology He Utilizes in the Classroom

"Narrated lectures and interactive classroom activities for online learning."

Pedagogical Changes on the Horizon

"I see intersections between communication technology and teaching on the horizon. This will offer more opportunities for students to learn in new ways, such as virtual reality."

Current Research

"This year, I am working on some research examining how marital partners navigate stressful transitions and communicate support during those transitions. My website, www.alangoodboy.com features some of this research."

Work or Publication Most Proud of

"Goodboy, A. K., Bolkan, S., Sharabi, L. L., Myers, S. A., & Baker, J. P. (2020). The relational turbulence model: A meta-analytic review. Human Communication Research, 46, 222-249. doi:10.1093/hcr/hqaa002"

About Mentoring

"Mentoring has helped me focus on research and develop my teaching skills. I am thankful to have had strong mentoring. When I mentor graduate students, I try to emulate my mentors who are faculty at WVU."

Book Currently Reading

"Right now, I’m reading a statistics book on latent growth curve modeling, which makes me a stats nerd who is not very fun."

Read Alan Goodboy's Bio

Learn More About Communication Studies

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