Stern, Students to Research Communication

Lesa Stern, communication studies professor, joined the Westmont faculty this fall and looks forward to mentoring and conducting research with her students. She completed a study on students’ use of the popular social networking Web site Facebook while teaching at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

“It was the good, the bad and the ugly,” Stern says. “Students will tell you a lot on their profiles. That was a fun one.”

Her research interests include marital and friendship conflict, rhetorical figures in advertising, and assessment.

Stern graduated from UCLA and earned her master’s degree and doctorate at the University of Arizona. She has been teaching at SIUE since 1994.

She co-authored a chapter, “Face time: Public sociality, social encounters and gender at the university recreation center,” in “Together Alone,” and she expects “Inspecting the Unexpected: The Dynamic Relationship between Incongruity and Visual Imagery” to be published later this year in “Go Figure: New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric.”

Stern says she was on her way to pursing a career as an engineer before she took a communication and psychology class in high school.

“I loved it,” she says. “I then went on to double major in communication studies and psychology at UCLA.”

Along with her teaching duties at SIUE, Stern worked as the university’s assessment director.

“I loved my job and I loved my house, you know St. Louis is very affordable,” she says. “I was really happy there.” But Stern says she felt called to apply for the Westmont job and after two trips to the campus in Montecito, she was hooked.

“I had never been to a small Christian campus like this,” she says. “I enjoyed everybody. The students and faculty I met with were really nice and genuine. I just had a feeling that this was the place.”