Communication Faculty

Dr. Warren Bareiss studies relationships among health, communication, and culture. His analysis of self-injury in films was awarded Top Paper, Southern States Communication Association Gender Studies Division in 2015, and a later version was published by the Journal of Medical Humanities. His analysis of U.S. press coverage of adolescent self-injury was published in Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine. He earned a Ph.D. from Indiana University and a master's from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He also earned a postdoctoral graduate certificate in health communication from the Arnold School for Public Health and the School of Journalism at the University of South Carolina. In 2015, Dr. Bareiss developed a Health Communication minor at the University of South Carolina Upstate. He teaches mass communication theory, research methods, health communication, and international media.

Dr. Michelle Epstein Garland is an associate professor in communication studies and the basic course director for public speaking. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from the College of Charleston and her Master of Science and Ph.D., in both communication and information, from the University of Tennessee. Dr. Garland has taught courses in public speaking, theories and principles in human communication, communication research methods, interpersonal communication, and senior seminar at the University of South Carolina Upstate; she also has experience teaching business and professional communication and professional skills development. Her research falls under the umbrella of instructional communication with two foci: the impact of faculty messages on college student identities and student outcomes; as well as student, course and program assessment and evaluation.

Suzanne Hall is an instructor of communication at the University of South Carolina Upstate, where she has taught since 2015. She graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcasting, and she earned a Master of Arts degree in journalism from Marshall University in 1998. She is currently completing her doctoral studies in health promotion, education and behavior at the University of South Carolina.

Emily Kofoed holds a doctorate in rhetoric and politics from Georgia State University’s Department of Communication, a master's degree from Kansas State University and a bachelor's degree in mass communications from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Kofoed spent two years as an assistant professor of communication and the assistant director of forensics at Tennessee State University. Her research considers the relationship between rhetorics of citizenship, gender and sexuality, and is primarily guided by theories of critical rhetoric and visual politics. These areas of research focus are reflected in her courses in the Department of Fine Arts and Communication Studies at USC Upstate, which include advanced public speaking, argumentation and debate, and rhetorical theory and criticism.

Dr. Shuang Liu is an assistant professor of mass media and digital studies. She earned her doctorate in communication from Washington State University. Her research is focused on learning about how media, especially new media technologies, improve health and how such information is processed and understood. She teaches courses in public relations, mass communication theory, mass media and society, and digital studies. 

Allison Ludwig is a senior instructor of mass media and public relations at the University of South Carolina Upstate. She has been teaching at the University since 2006. She graduated from USC Upstate (Spartanburg) in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications with a concentration in journalism. She earned a Master of Arts degree in professional communication from Clemson University in 2003. Allison also serves as the faculty advisor for The Carolinian, USC Upstate’s print and online student publication.

Gary Mattingly is a senior instructor of mass media. After completing a successful 30-year career in television news, Mr. Mattingly joined the Upstate faculty in August 2007. Mattingly served as a general assignment reporter and anchor for television stations in Spartanburg and Columbia, South Carolina; Portsmouth, Virginia; Orlando and Gainesville, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Among the many stories covered by Mattingly during his career are the burning of an entire Philadelphia neighborhood when a group of radicals engaged in a week-long standoff with police, the first women to go to sea for the U.S. Navy, nine years of reporting from Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras and some of the worst storms to hit the United States including Hurricanes Opal and Andrew. He is the recipient of numerous broadcast industry awards and is an avid scuba diver. When he is not in the classroom, you’ll find Mr. Mattingly volunteering for community projects and organizations.

Renu Pariyadath studies strategies for organizing around social and environmental justice, particularly in the context of broad-based alliances to resist the global restructuring of lives and labor. Her scholarship engages the intersection of critical cultural studies, environmental communication and non-profit organizational studies, but also draws widely from transnational feminist theory, and sociological and anthropological scholarship on transnational citizenship. Dr. Pariyadath teaches environmental communication, communication for social change, ethics in human communication, organizational communication, and gender and communication. She earned her doctorate in communication studies from the University of Iowa with a minor in gender, women’s and sexuality studies, and has a master's degree in communication from The Ohio State University. She is actively involved in environmental justice work in the U.S. and in India and was previously an international working journalist.

David Wallace is an associate professor of communication at USC Upstate and the coordinator for the communication programs within the Department of Fine Arts and Communication Studies. He received his doctorate in communication from the University of Colorado and his bachelor’s degree in media studies from the College of Charleston. Prior to his time at USC Upstate, he worked in marketing and public relations and as a sportswriter in Boulder, Colorado. His research interests include the role of media during times of social change and the use of new media technologies to provide voice and community for marginalized populations. These interests have led to multiple projects and publications researching the impact of segregationist pressures on the freedom of the press in the South during the civil rights movement and the use of the Internet by the homeless. At USC Upstate, Dr. Wallace teaches courses in public relations, mass communication law and ethics, mass communication history, international media, senior seminar and research methods. He is also the co-director of an international media teaching and study abroad partnership with the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences in Magdeburg, Germany.

Dr. Carolina Webber earned her Ph.D. in organizational communication and cultural studies (speech communication) at the University of Utah. Her research is informed by critical and feminist theories of organization and qualitative research methods as she studies relationships among power, organization and identity. Her current research projects explore the organization of difference (race, class, gender and sexuality) in social institutions such as the workplace and higher education. Dr. Webber draws on her interdisciplinary training to teach a variety of courses at the University of South Carolina Upstate, including Organizational Communication, Small Group Communication, Theories and Principles of Communication, Intercultural Communication, and her newly developed courses, Interviewing and Communicating Difference in Social Institutions.