Faculty

David Ryan serves as the Academic Director and Faculty Chair for the Professional Communication and Certificate in Professional Communication programs. He teaches undergraduate courses in rhetoric, focusing on orality and literacy studies, and graduate courses in strategic and technical communication, specializing in strategic planning and usability/UX studies. His research interests relate the intellectual history of technical communication with classicism, human enhancement technologies, and...

Tika Lamsal earned his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from University of Louisville. He teaches courses on rhetoric and composition, cross-cultural communication, and global rhetorics in both Rhetoric and Language Department and MA in Professional Communication Program. Through the lens of critical ethnography, his research examines the intersection of linguistic, cultural, and multimodal literacies of Bhutanese refugees in U.S. contexts to demonstrate how the refugees negotiate their ways to...

Ted Matula earned his PhD in Communication from The Ohio State University, specializing in rhetorical theory and its usefulness in studying popular culture. In addition to public speaking and written and oral communication, he teaches courses on popular culture, free speech, and communication ethics. His research has been published in Communication Studies and Popular Music and Society.

Leigh Meredith earned her PhD in Communication Studies, specializing in Rhetoric and Public Culture, from Northwestern University.

Her research and teaching interests center on the relationship between changing communication technologies, practices of representation, and popular conceptions of identity and subjectivity. More specifically, she focuses on the interface between old and new media, and what that site of convergence reveals about changing ways of reading and relating to others.

Allison Thorson is a Professor of Communication Studies, Chair of the Department of Communication Studies, Director of the Interdisciplinary Committee on Children and Youth, and Director of the Child and Youth Studies Minor at University of San Francisco. Her research focuses on how individuals and families communicatively manage and maintain individual/relational well-being in the context of — often deemed taboo — unexpected, hurtful, or non-normative events (e.g., family communication...

Larry began his career as a political campaign manager and consultant, working for former U.S. Senator Paul Simon and Reps. Abner Mikva and Lane Evans of Illinois, and former California Lt. Governor Leo T. McCarthy. Today, he is a veteran public affairs strategist and an expert in the management of difficult, public-facing challenges that determine the future of reputations, brands, and careers. His skills come from more than 30 years' work as a communications consultant, an executive in...

Gilbert Martinez adjunct professor in the Professional Communication program, is a public relations veteran with more than a decade of communication experience in corporate, nonprofit and government settings. Today, he is a public information officer for the County of Sonoma. He has assisted in implementing communication plans for wildfire recovery,  the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 winter storms and communications related to homelessness in Sonoma County.

Kevin Slattery is an adjunct professor with the University of San Francisco in the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Management. He teaches Media Advocacy in the Master of Professional Communications program and Nonprofit Marketing and Communications in the Master of Nonprofit Management program. With a background in marketing and communications, he has an established reputation within the government and nonprofit sectors in the United States. 

As a nonprofit executive, advisory...