Patricia Oliver

Patricia Oliver

Associate Professor of Communiction Studies

    Personal profile

    About

    B.A., M.A., California State University at Los Angeles (CSULA)
    Professor Oliver has also taught Communication Studies courses at West Los Angeles College, Pierce College, California State University Northridge, and California State University Los Angeles. She regularly teaches Public Speaking, Interpersonal, Intercultural, Gender Communication, and Rhetoric of Women. She also teaches Communication Behavior in Childhood, Rhetorical Discourse, Rhetoric of Popular Culture, and Health and Disability Communication, among others, and has overseen numerous Communication Practicum (internship) courses.
    For California State University Los Angeles, School of Education, she has evaluated the communication skills of student teachers, taught Intercultural Communication in Urban Settings and mini-courses on mainstreaming children with disabilities into regular classrooms. She was the first female chair of the Communication Arts Department (School of Film and Television), LMU and a former chair of the Communication Studies Department, LMU. Former president and program director of California Women in Higher Education, LMU chapter and once named woman of the year by that chapter.
    She served as LMU’s first sexual harassment mediator, vice president of LMU’s Faculty Senate, first vice chair of the Academic Assembly, LMU college facilitator for multicultural affairs, and as a member of LMU’s Racial Discrimination Mediation Panel, Intercultural Advisory Committee, and on the Committee on Faculty Committees. And LMU’s students once voted her the university’s teacher of the year.
    Professor Oliver’s research focuses on developing peer mentoring to facilitate learning and build communities, particularly among the underprivileged. Her research has taken her from religious communities in Northern California to villages in rural Namibia. In her long career, Professor Oliver has mentored countless students, student organizations, and faculty.