Co Mm Critic
T
om Carmody, chair of the department of communication at Vanguard University and a faculty member for 21 years, teaches one of the most legendary and feared classes on campus — the senior capstone course for communication majors. The class, with its daunting fifty-page paper on media criticism, looms over every graduating senior’s schedule.
“As a student, you’re deathly afraid,” says Ann-Caryn Cleveland ’98, one of Carmody’s former students and now associate professor and head of cinema/digital media at Vanguard. She recalls Carmody’s first-day theatrics: he comes to class wearing a black suit with a red tie and writes “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” from Dante’s Inferno in Italian on the board before going over the class’ requirements. Many students experience something close to abject terror. But over the course of the semester, Carmody teaches them how to tackle large, complex projects. In the end, students realize they can accomplish something they may have thought impossible. “What’s great about the class is that he walks you through this huge project,” says Cleveland. “He prepares you with skills that everyone needs, no matter what profession you enter.” Carmody, who speaks with the clear diction of a radio host, says he is convinced undergrads can do high-level work if challenged and taught to do it. “Every one of our majors who comes out of the senior capstone class is prepared for graduate school,” he says. “They know how to research and write. I tell them, ‘I will not lower the bar. I will give you a boost up, I will let you climb on my shoulders over the bar, but you’re getting over the bar. If you want grace, go to the department of religion. They won’t give it to you, they’ll explain it to you.’” Carmody, who is known for his wry humor, teaches a variety of communication classes and has been chair of the department for eleven years. He came to Christ while watching a Christian television program in 1975.
“That’s what I had a passion for,” he says. He joined the forensics team in community college to become a better preacher and accepted a forensics scholarship to Biola, helping to pay his way through college by competing against schools such as USC and UCLA. Todd Lewis, professor and chair of the department of communication studies at Biola University, was Carmody’s professor and says Carmody was one of the few students who really “got” the notion of doing rhetorical analysis of messages in popular culture. “His research and publication efforts have continued the excellence of his commitment to investigating rhetoric in the strangest but most significant places,” says Lewis. “He teaches his students to write and provide insightful commentary and analysis. He has a winsome, satirical sense of humor, and his approach disarms students and peers. It’s no accident that he has won teaching awards at Vanguard, because he brings a commitment to excellence to the classroom, demanding of the students no less than what he demands of his own efforts.” After graduating from Biola, Carmody hoped to pastor a church, but invitations never materialized, and he sensed another direction. One night during a time of prayer, the Lord showed him he could reach more people with the good news if he taught Christians to communicate well than if he preached to the same congregation every Sunday. “I see teaching as a very clear ministry,” Carmody says. “I’m able to teach my students effective ways to communicate and to model good communication for them. They go out and make a difference in the world. My students are in every profession imaginable and in places I could never reach. That’s what I’m excited about, when I hear about them succeeding wherever they go.” He earned his master’s degree in speech communication at CSU Fullerton, and his doctorate in communication from Regent University, coming to Vanguard in 1986 as the speech and debate coach. He has been a full-time faculty member since 1989, teaching media criticism, persuasion, small group leadership, contemporary issues in American public discourse, interpersonal communication, basic speech, forensics, argumentation and debate, TV advertising, science fiction — and more. “I’m a rhetorical historian, meaning I study rhetoric within its historical context,” he says. “My emphasis is on analyzing rhetoric. That’s why you’ll see me criticizing everything from sermons to comic books to science fiction. I enjoy the field because you can look at all kinds of communication.” During his time at Vanguard, the communication major has grown into the second largest major at the university, with just under 200 students. Carmody credits “fantastic faculty members.”
“I’ve never forgotten that the God of the universe touched me and called me through the media,” he says. “And here I am in a department that teaches media.”
“It’s been a blessing to be chair,” he says. “I couldn’t ask for better people to work with. They are wonderful, caring, consummate professionals. It’s been an easy eleven years because the people I work with are fantastic.”
But for years his ambition was to enter full-time ministry.
Unlike many university communication departments, Vanguard’s combines communication
14 vanguard magazine fall/winter 2010