Kristina Morehouse

I have been blessed to enjoy two professions in my life--teaching and writing. Each day, I am excited to come to Gonzaga to teach my students, but more importantly, for them to teach me. I believe that the key to a good life is infinite curiosity. As Paolo Friere says, "Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning."

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Kristina Morehouse fell hard for words at an early age. Like many young people, she flirted with other fields, including a dalliance with biology that earned her an undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She reconnected with her passion for writing while earning an English degree with a creative writing concentration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She then completed her master’s degree at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas.

Kristina Morehouse spent 13 years working as a journalist at newspapers including The Kansas City Star and The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. While she loved storytelling, she found she also loved teaching after co-teaching a writing class with a journalism colleague. From there, she began teaching full-time at Gonzaga University where she has taught a variety of classes that include communication and culture, communication and technology, ethnography, academic and journalistic writing, and media literacy. She regularly reviews books for Communication Research Trends, and her co-authored work on virtual grief has appeared in Media Development and Communication Research Trends. She frequently guest lectures on storytelling and online identity formation.

Kristina Morehouse is actively involved in mentoring programs for first-generation college students and students from under-represented populations. She also teaches public-speaking in multicultural classrooms that include a mix of international as well as U.S. students. She feels exceptionally grateful to spend her day in the company of students who make her forget she is actually working.

As a novice teacher, Kristina Morehouse found that coaching writing and coaching speech posed similar issues of vulnerability and that she enjoyed helping students expand their comfort zones. She has spent nearly 10 years in the public-speaking classroom, and she serves as the liaison for adjunct faculty who teach public speaking. She also chaired the committee that re-envisioned her university’s core communication and public-speaking class, and she now works with her colleagues on ways to better engage students in the new curriculum. Her research interests include storytelling, media literacy, the intersection of social media and social change, and communication pedagogy in the multicultural classroom.