Robert Rowland

Dr. Rowland's major teaching and research interests are in rhetorical criticism, argumentation, and the public sphere. Dr. Rowland and his debate colleague were the 1976 National Debate Champions for KU. He is a former director of forensics at KU and at Baylor University. Dr. Rowland received the Louise Byrd Award for Graduate Teaching at the Doctoral Hooding ceremony May 2000. He also is a recipient of the William T. Kemper Teaching Fellowship and the Bernard Fink Award for outstanding teaching, and is a two-time HOPE Award finalist. He also has received an Outstanding Service Award from the Kansas Bar Association based on his work in Continuing Legal Education on legal advocacy. In November 2006, he was honored by the National Communication Association with the Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teaching in Higher Education.   The same organization honored him in 2011 with the Douglas W. Ehninger Rhetorical Scholar Award.  He is one of two people in the discipline to be honored with lifetime awards for scholarship and teaching.   His co-authored book with David Frank, Shared Land/Conflicting Identity (Michigan State University Press) in 2002 was honored in 2003 with the Kohrs-Campbell prize in rhetorical criticism. A recent survey of journals ranked him among the fifty most published scholars in the discipline.