Contemporary Public Speaking

Pat Gehrke (he/him) is a professor in the Speech, Communication, and Rhetoric Program and the Department of English at the University of South Carolina. He has over twenty years of experience teaching and directing public speaking courses. He has taught over fifteen different undergraduate courses, including public speaking, online public communication, small group communication, political communication, civic engagement, argumentation, rhetoric, and communication ethics. He also designed and teaches USC's unique and innovative online public speaking course. He is the author or editor of six books including The Ethics and Politics of Speech (2009), A Century of Communication Studies (with William Keith, 2014), and Teaching First-Year Communication Courses (2017). He served as editor of Review of Communication from 2013 to 2016 and has twice received the National Communication Association's presidential citation for service to the discipline. He is widely recognized as a leading authority on the history of communication studies in the United States and an innovator in online public speaking pedagogy. He holds a PhD in communication from the Pennsylvania State University.