Dr. Randa Lumsden Garden is a professor of communication arts in the Department of Communication Arts at Wayne State College. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Garden recently authored a journal article titled “She Went to Church to Pray and Was Preyed Upon”: A Narrative Inquiry of Financial Elder Abuse Via Religious Affinity Fraud that was published in The Journal of Communication and Religion (Volume 45, Issue 1, Spring 2022), pp. 61-85. (You can obtain the online version in the Communication and Mass Media Complete (Ebscohost) Database.)
In 2017, Garden and Dr. William Seiler, professor of communication at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, co-authored a research paper titled, “Serious illness conversations with doctors: Patients using information from sources other than their doctors.” This article, published in Health Communication, is based on the first author’s dissertation directed by Seiler at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Read the online version of the journal article available through Taylor & Francis.
Garden has presented her research at several of the annual National Communication Association (NCA) Conferences, and Central State Communication Association (CSCA) Conferences. She also presented a scholarly paper at the Western States Communication Association (WSCA) Conference in Palm Springs, Calif. Her primary research interests focus on qualitative narrative research, particularly in health and illness. She has presented her work on issues related to doctor-patient communication, and financial elder abuse, and has also explored the communication challenges of family caregivers for those with Alzheimer’s disease.
Education
Ph.D., 2009 – University of Nebraska-Lincoln
MSE, 1998 – Wayne State College
B.S., 1996 – Wayne State College
A.A., 1974 – Northeast Community College
Academic Interests
Garden teaches Health Communication, Communication Ethics, Organizational Communication, Qualitative Research Design, and Principles of Human Communication. In the summer, she teaches an online master’s degree Qualitative Research Design class. In addition to conducting her own research, she enjoys helping students with their original research and preparing them to present their work at major conferences. Students from her Qualitative Research Design (QRD) class have been honored at Central States Communication conferences since 2012 for their original research. Their papers, which were the final research projects in her QRD class, were competitively reviewed and accepted for presentation.
Garden is an instructor to honors students on their honors research projects presented at the Spring and Fall Honor Colloquiums. Each spring, Garden and students in her Organizational Communication class participate in a Service-Learning research project examining “Emotions in Organizations.”
Garden presently serves on the Rural Law Opportunities Program (RLOP) committee and the Rank, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT) Committee.
