UW-Milwaukee
Professor of Communication
Wisconsin Teaching Scholar, 2020-22
Co-Director, Wisconsin Teaching Fellows & Scholars (Starting in 2026)
Nothing happens the way you expect it to.
The trick is to find joy and meaning in the unexpected.
Changing universities is simultaneously thrilling and daunting. I had established myself at my previous university, earned tenure, and was running a campuswide peer review of teaching program that was well respected and funded. I was comfortable. Moving to UW-Milwaukee occurred through a serendipitous unfolding of events that was not planned or intentional, but a wonderful opportunity just the same. In many ways, this position found me.
I spent my first year at UW-Milwaukee humbly working through the insecurities of the tenure process a second time and wondering if my previous successes were enough. Developing relationships, learning to connect with a new student base, understanding who to ask for things, and even simple realizations, like finding there was no FedEx drop box on campus, all took time. Amidst the uncertainty and newness, I was asked to present a teaching strategy with our CETL Active Teaching Lab and instantly knew these were kindred souls. It was a happy chance encounter that led to my discovery of the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars (WTFS) program.
I centered my WTFS application on researching how students could develop greater intrinsic motivation across various grading schemes to foster growth in addition to competency. I held my breath for a moment, made a positive wish, and sent my essay and carefully edited documentation off with great hope. I wanted to be a part of this group… I needed to be a part of this learning community.
I literally danced around the office with joy when I was accepted alongside one of my department colleague and friend. The two of us would represent the university in the 2020-2021 WTFS cohort. This was going to be amazing!
I never could have predicted a global pandemic that would change everything.
The world shut down and moved indoors.
We all moved to emergency online teaching.
My students were stunned and felt stuck.
I felt stuck.
In the moment, what would happen with WTFS was uncertain. This golden opportunity seemed tenuous and potentially out of reach. Yet, Fay Akindes, Heather Pelzel, and Alisson Staudinger modeled courage to make a path forward. Heather and Alisson developed WTFS online book discussions and program components enabling my WTFS cohort could connect with inter-disciplinary colleagues across the Universities of Wisconsin. In a very dark time, this was my light as we struggled together to make sense of our role as educators, take one day at a time, and advance learning for ourselves, each other, and our students.
I was not alone.
From my WTFS cohort, I learned a great deal about different disciplines, configurations of UW universities, and orientations to students. I acquired new teaching strategies and activities. I was inspired by the ways WTFS colleagues were pushing the boundaries across teaching and learning. I borrowed compassionate syllabus language, contributed ideas for how online structure could be designed and scaffolded in Canvas to help students succeed, discussed Gannon’s (2020) Radical Hope, and explored ways to center students.
Yet, I kept circling back to the experience of being stuck and productive struggle. Some of my students were adapting well, but so many seemed completely paralyzed. Many students shared they were overwhelmed, some expressed gratitude for the flexible course design, and others ghosted me despite every attempt to reach them. How could I help students – within my role as an educator – get unstuck and find paths forward to enhance their resilience and learning?
After Nancy Chick visited our group and expanded the definition of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), I created a new WTFS project. I needed to understand student experiences so that I could put into practice new strategies to help them grow and work through challenges. What caused students to feel stuck? When students were stuck, who did they turn to? What communication encounters helped students get unstuck so they could continue to learn and be a part of the class community?
I learned a great deal from the 203 students who generously contributed:
- Students have complicated lives. While coursework was the most frequent challenge identified, students shared an array of other salient challenges including mental health, selecting a major, online learning, feeling overwhelmed, being a new college student, work obligations, time management, motivation, roommate/friend conflict, and financial concerns, among others. Feeling stuck often hijacked their ability to concentrate on coursework, compounding problems.
- When stuck, students turned to educators (e.g., professors, instructors, teaching assistants) to help them overcome challenges the most frequently (56.2%), followed by parents (38.9%), friends (26.1%), and advisors (17.2%), among others. This emphasizes the important role educators play in helping students overcome educational challenges and learn successful life strategies.
- It is important to listen to student concerns and help students work through the problem. Messages that helped students get “unstuck” included those that offered instrumental and/or emotional support. The greatest number of students shared that problem solving (instrumental support messages that allowed students to identify and develop their own action steps) helped them overcome challenges. Effective emotional support messages included communication behaviors such as offering encouragement, acknowledging student challenges, and providing perspective.
Finally, reading students’ responses to my open-ended questions also helped me realize that students often have fewer life experiences to reference, which accentuates how they experience the problem severity and limits perceived problem-solving options. Students don’t experience problems the same way I (and most educators) do with years of experiences to draw on to understand and buffer adverse events. This nuanced perspective of how students and educators can have similar challenges but experience them differently is important in assisting students.
These findings led to changes in the way I approach students. I adjusted my syllabus language to be even more conversational and compassionate, enhanced work deadlines/flexibility, added scaffolding and low stakes elements to affirm students while monitoring their learning, built in problem solving activities that fostered peer relationships, changed my feedback to communicate high expectations alongside my belief in students ability to succeed, called attention to academic and life related resources (e.g., food pantry, mental health services, etc.), used positive identity-affirming communication strategies in and outside of the classroom, and explicitly invited conversations to check-in and problem solve with students. Even so, I still am growing and continually experimenting to implement evolving ways to build stronger connections with and between students while fostering deeper learning.
My participation in WTFS and my engagement with SoTL informs and feeds my career in higher education. Considering my story and context, these life events and my involvement in WTFS changed everything. I found supportive teacher-scholars across disciplines and universities that generously shared their perspectives and experiences, solved problems with me, and gave me a sense of connection and community across the Universities of Wisconsin. This feeling of belonging and support was instrumental in nurturing my career and finding a sense of place for me. It also led to realizations about the importance of ontological security that we all need, but particularly students need, to create space for learning.
WTFS provided the opportunity to research and seek answers for ways to promote student learning and success. For me, SoTL is a habit of mind and orientation to students, not simply a research project to complete. Regardless of publishing SoTL work, every class I teach is a new experiment to improve learning and connect with students.
While I never could have anticipated moving to UW-Milwaukee, the Covid-19 pandemic, WTFS, or subsequent events which continue to unfold, these experiences converge to shape my career as an educator by incubating a productive struggle with important lessons, revelations, and moments of joy and connection. I am grateful for the friendships, ideas, growth, and evolving ways to serve my students while nurturing future generations of learners and problem solvers. The world is uncertain and unpredictable, but through the unexpected we can adapt, grow in resilience, and emerge wiser and more compassionate from the journey.
Biography:
Dr. Sarah E. Riforgiate (M.A. and Ph.D., Arizona State University, Tempe) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. As an organizational communication scholar, she is interested in the ways communication shapes meaning and understanding – organizes – processes, structures, and possibilities. Dr. Riforgiate’s publications include work-life concerns, leadership, emotions in organizations, conflict, and policy communication. Recently, she has been exploring how different communication technologies and affordances during remote work arrangements shape work-life interactions related to perceived social support and burnout. Her work has been published Communication Monographs, Management Communication Quarterly, Sustainability, Communication Education, Communication Teacher, Western Journal of Communication, Electronic Journal of Communication, and other scholarly peer reviewed journals as well as numerous encyclopedia and handbook chapters. As an educator, Dr. Riforgiate strives to create learning experiences that persist well beyond the classroom by developing tight-knit learning communities, leveraging experiential-based learning opportunities, and incorporating teaching technologies that enhance engagement and learning. As a lifelong learner, she regularly participates in educational training, earning year-long certifications including the Certificate in Effective College Instruction through the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) and the Certified Canvas Educator designation through Instructure. Additionally, she was selected and participated as a scholar in the 2020-2022 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholar Program. Sarah consistently leads pedagogical workshops including facilitating a week-long workshop for the National Communication Association (NCA) Faculty Development Institute in 2021 and directing the Peer Review of Teaching year-long program at Kansas State University in 2017-2018. Sarah’s teaching excellence has been recognized with six different awards including the 2022 Joanne Lazirko Teaching Award (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), the 2018 Global Campus Excellence in Online Teaching Award (Kansas-State University), and the 2015 Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (Kansas State University).
Selected Teaching and SoTL Publications:
Riforgiate, S. E. (accepted). Paradigmatic perspectives and the human continuum. In J. M. Bowman (Ed.), Teaching research methods in communication studies (pp. XX-XX). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Riforgiate, S. E. (2022). Graduate student socialization: Getting somewhere. Communication Education, 1(1), 71–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2021.1995765
Riforgiate, S. E., Gattoni, A., & Kane, S. R. (2022). Graduate teaching assistants’ liminality and post-COVID-19 educational legacy. In M. G. Strawser (Ed.), Higher education implications for teaching and learning during COVID-19 (pp. 33–50). Lexington. ISBN: 9781793649782
Riforgiate, S. E., Gattoni, A., & Kirby, E. L. (2019). Organizing the organizational communication course: Content and pedagogical recommendations. Journal of Communication Pedagogy, 2, 7–11. https://doi.org/10.31446/JCP.2019.03
Riforgiate, S. E. (2019). Puzzled by communication theory? Playing with puzzle pieces to promote teamwork and theory understanding. Communication Teacher, 33(4), 281–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2019.1575435
Riforgiate, S. E. (2019). “I know what the article says, but I’m not like that”: Engaging students in research to increase awareness of diversity perceptions. Journal of Communication Speech and Theatre Association of North Dakota, 31, 43–50. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nwZAvmkRqEG2gzgQGtlxpmdn6qN98M3b/view
Riforgiate, S. E. (2016). Posting perceptions: Acknowledging patterns and subconscious biases. In C. K. Rudick, K. B. Golsan & K. Cheesewright (Eds.), Teaching from the heart & learning to make a difference: Teaching the introductory communication course through critical communication pedagogy (pp. 181–186). Cognella. ISBN: 9781516513352