2012 Lindback Award Winner: Joy Cypher

Joy M. Cypher is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies.  She hails from the Midwest, having been born and raised in Wisconsin.  She earned her BA in Communication at Loyola University of Chicago in 1992, her MA in Interpersonal Communication (1994) and her Ph.D. In Interpersonal Communication and Theories of Embodiment (1999), both from Purdue University. Joy cut her teeth teaching at Purdue as a teaching assistant for 6 years, and during that time was awarded the Bruce Kendall Award for Graduate Teaching, the International Communication Association Graduate Teaching Excellence Award, and was named an Alan H. Monroe Scholar for excellence in scholarly achievement.  Dr. Cypher taught for two years at West Chester University before beginning her tenure track career at Rowan in 2000.  In her time here, she has been named a Bildner Fellow (2004) and been included on the Wall of fame five times.  She has published and presented
over a dozen works specifically on pedagogy, communication, and her main area of scholarship, Disability Studies.  She has also held numerous leadership positions in the Disability Issues Caucus of the National
Communication Association, as well as within the Voices of Diversity Interest group of the Eastern Communication Association.  In 2009, Dr. Cypher was a Second Vice President of the Eastern Communication Association during its centennial year.  As a teacher, a citizen and an intellectual, Dr. Cypher is deeply motivated by Lee Thayer's claim that, "As we communicate, so shall we be."