mary lahman

professor of communication studies at manchester university

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Mary Lahman is a Professor of Communication Studies at Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana. She is the former Education Chair of the International Listening Association, as well as one of the first five people nationwide to become a Certified Practitioner of the ECHO Listening Profile. In 2018 she developed and implemented a new curriculum at the University dedicated to Listening.

Mary incorporates appreciative inquiry and diversity-affirming ethics into her teaching of intercultural communication, listening and general semantics. Her new book, Awareness and Action: A Travel Companion, published by the Institute of General Semantics in August 2018, was created as a practical guide for learning to communicate well. She urges readers to answer the following core questions: “Are you aware of how your words create worlds?” and “Are you aware of how your language and listening habits impact interactions in the classroom, at work and on the road?” A frequent collaborator on scholarly publications, she has articles in Health Communication, Family Communication, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Listening Education, and Communication Teacher, and just finished the 2nd edition of Communication Across Contexts: A Listening-centered Approach (Kendall Hunt, 2014 & 2018) with departmental colleagues. Lahman is forever grateful for the fine tutelage of her general semantics teacher-mentors, and credits them for winning the Sanford I. Berman Award for Excellence in Teaching General Semantics in 2014.

Professor Lahman is a 1983 graduate of Manchester University and holds advanced degrees from Miami University of Ohio (MA, 1984) and Indiana University (Ph.D., 1996). Before teaching at Manchester, Mary worked in professional sales for 11 years: four years for Eastman Kodak Company in upstate New York, followed by seven years for Johnson & Johnson in northeast Indiana. She works with leaders from Steel Dynamics, STAR Financial Bank, and Wabash County Leadership Development to develop individual and team listening intelligence.