I am a professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State University and Associate Dean of Academics at Penn State's Schreyer Honors College. I am author of Paving the Way for Madam President (2006); Seen and Heard: The Women of Television News (2008), Almost Madam President: Why Hillary Clinton 'won' in 2008 (2009), The Rhetoric of Supreme Court Women (2012) and co-author of Elizabeth Hanford Dole: Speaking from the Heart (2006) and Gender and the American Presidency: Nine Presidential Women and the Barriers They Faced (2012). In 2015 I co-authored, with a Schreyer Scholar, a children's book based on my research: Madam President: Five Women Who Paved the Way that tells the story of five women who ran for president and encourages children to try things that may be difficult.