Assistant Professor of Performance and Communication Arts Traci Fordham-Hernandez knew she wanted to be a professor from the first time she set foot in a classroom.

“When I was an undergraduate, I did my first year at a small liberal arts college in Minnesota.  Interdisciplinary study was so interesting and so enriching, I just couldn’t imagine doing anything else besides teaching,” she says. 

She received her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin in 1986 and 1988, respectively, and her Ph.D. in social sciences and intercultural communication, as well as a Graduate Certificate in women’s studies, from Syracuse University in 2002.

Before becoming part of the performance and communication arts faculty at St. Lawrence, she was a visiting assistant professor in the sociology department. She also taught gender studies courses and in the First-Year Program.

“I enjoy watching students fall in love with questions and become dedicated to exploring the answers to them, or trying to ask different questions,” she says.  One of her most rewarding experiences at St. Lawrence was seeing her first First-Year Program cohort graduate.

Fordham-Hernandez is currently teaching Introduction to Communication Studies, Sex Talk (a course that she team-teaches with Professor of Gender Studies Valerie Lehr, which explores and challenges dominant discourses about young adult sexualities), and Rhetoric and Public Speaking.

Fordham-Hernandez continues to examine and pursue many research opportunities. She has received a grant to continue her research on multi-ethnic families. “I’m interested in how dominant discourses around ‘mixed’ racial identities are negotiated by families who define themselves as multiracial or multiethnic,” she explains. “I’m also doing research and writing about dialogue and intergroup communication and their links to democracy and civic engagement. I continue to do research and write about travel, intercultural communication, and cross-cultural adaptation.  Given that teaching is about communication, I’ve also become interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning.”