Biography

Professor, Communication Studies
Health & Science Commuication
Ph.D. Purdue University

Dr. Cypher is a Full Professor in the department of Communication Studies, where she has been teaching since 2000. She is also the Coordinator of the Health and Science Communication program. 

 Joy’s interests as a teacher and scholar engage the intersection of discourse and the body, where the lived experience of health, communication and ethics reside.  Her work reflects this curiosity, most frequently with her scholarship in Disability Studies, but also ethics and pedagogy.

Dr. Cypher sees the classroom as a pretty magical place—where ideas come to life, perspectives are stretched, and questions of high import are raised and engaged thoughtfully. She is thrilled to be a part of the new, interdisciplinary program of Health and Science Communication and its fabulous faculty; and she looks forward to working with its new majors to find the perfect fit for their own questions, curiosities and interests.

Courses

CMS 04380 Health Communication

CMS 04385 Constructing Health

CMS 04425 Ethical Issues in Human Communication

Recent Publications

Jeffress, M. S., Cypher, J. M., Ferris, J., Scott-Pollock J. (Eds). (2023). The Palgrave handbook of disability and communication. Palgrave Macmillan.

Coleman, M.C. & Cypher, J.M. (2020). The digital rhetorics of AIDS denialist networked publics. First Monday.  www.firstmonday.org

Cypher, J.M. (2017). Disability studies in the communication ethics classroom: Pedagogies of justice and voice. In M. S. Jeffress (Ed.), Pedagogy, disability and communication (pp.1-10). New York:  Routledge Press.

Recent Awards and Grants

Cypher, J.M. [Principle Investigator] Medical education: Embodied struggles between competence and empathy. Rowan University Seed Funding Grant (Co-Investigators: J. Niel Rosen, Seran Schug and Jay Chaskes). 

Harley J. Flack Mentor of the Year Award, Harley J. Flack Mentorship Program, Rowan University.

Distinguished Teaching Fellow, Eastern Communication Association.

Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, Rowan University.

Current Projects

Medical education: Embodied struggles between competence and empathy

Long term, phenomenological study of medical education. This work follows students through their medical school training using in depth interviews each semester to better gauge their experiences of the potentially contrasting objectives of competency and compassion.  Pilot study stage

Handbook of Disability and Communication—co-editor

Updated handbook for scholarship on communication studies and disability. The edited collection is bringing together work from across the Communication Studies discipline that has its particular focus on disability and discourse. Submission review stage.