Wilfredo Alvarez

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Wilfredo Alvarez

Associate Professor of Communication Studies

Communication Studies

Office Hours

Mondays: 2 pm - 4 pm
Tuesdays: 12 pm - 4 pm
Wednesdays: 2 pm - 4 pm

Biography

My teaching and research focus on communication issues related to social identity. I am interested in how communication practices create, conserve, and challenge systems of oppression, discrimination, and inequity.

Research Interests

    My research explores relationships between communication processes (e.g., everyday discourses that produce systems of text and meaning), categories of social difference (e.g., race, immigration status, and social class), and material and symbolic consequences of those relationships (e.g., racism, sexism, and classism) for marginalized societal members. I study the ways that communication reifies social hierarchies based on symbolic value assigned to social formations such as identity, difference/diversity, language, ideology, and institutional arrangements.

    I apply interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks (e.g., co-cultural communication theory, communication theory of identity, and appreciative inquiry) to understand and respond to persistent institutional problems related to social identity categorization (e.g., prejudice, domination, and injustice). In sum, I study forms and consequences of communication to reify power relations in social institutions, popular culture, intergroup relations, and organizational contexts.

Teaching Interests

    My role as a teacher is to help students become learners. This is a dynamic relational process that compels me to attend to their complex multidimensional needs. This means, passing on knowledge for instrumental and vocational purposes, but also being attuned with learners’ socioemotional needs, which means that I must be willing and ready to offer experienced advice and concerned mentoring whenever needed. In sum, as a teacher, I perceive that I have a responsibility not to lose touch with learners’ multidimensionality as human beings, and therefore, I need to orient myself toward their multifaceted educational needs.

    To help learners meet their diverse educational needs, my courses display a commitment to inclusive excellence. For instance, from course design to implementation, I am mindful of choosing various intellectual voices that represent diverse social standpoints and lived experiences. I am also intentional in engaging difficult conversations about individual experiences and systemic inequities through examining current social problems. Furthermore, I am attentive to learners’ vocational and socioemotional needs by providing additional support if necessary.

    In my courses, I strive to create a learning environment where I can develop constructive partnerships with learners. I am dedicated to merging established and current theory and research with a supportive communication climate that fosters encouraging relationships and mentorships. I also try to cultivate learners’ critical thinking and analytical reasoning, both inside and outside the classroom, through dialogue facilitation, oral and written assignments, and creative individual and group projects. I am mindful of engaging the teaching and learning process through a critical dialogic approach to adhere to “the four Es” of teaching—expertise, enthusiasm, empathy, and empowerment—to continually urge learners and myself to critique our taken for granted social standpoints and the standpoints of others.

    I seek new ways to improve my pedagogy. I implement critical communication pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and practices into my courses. For example, I challenge learners to be aware of themselves, their social locations, and how they enact their multiple identities in everyday interactions. In other words, I push learners to engage in self-reflexivity to promote self-growth and enriching relationships with others. I enjoy helping learners uncover relationships among communication, power, culture, and identity to deconstruct dominant accepted ideologies and discourses, and then to reconstruct them in more inclusive and compassionate ways. I believe these practices lead to empowering and inclusive classrooms. Additionally, my teaching style benefits tremendously from the rich and diverse lived experiences of a student body like the one represented at MSU Denver. During my time as a professor, I have found profound value and deep personal and professional enrichment from collaborating with a diverse nontraditional student body.

    To achieve my goals, I teach courses in the Professional and Organizational Communication Concentration and general studies areas, in addition to supplementing any other departmental needs. Given my background and experience, I developed curricula to teach courses in Presentational Communication, Introduction to Interpersonal Communication, and Introduction to Organizational Communication, among others. Furthermore, I have taught the following courses: Intercultural Communication; Leadership Communication; Diversity and Communication in the U.S.; Communication, Social Justice, and Public Advocacy; and Conflict Communication, just to name a few. In sum, I believe my breadth of teaching experience equips me well to make a positive instructional contribution to the Department of Communication Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Education

Other in Ethnic Studies

University of Colorado Boulder

PhD in Organizational Communication

University of Colorado Boulder

MS in Interpersonal Communication

Florida State University

BS in Interpersonal Communication

Rochester Institute of Technology

Published Works