Photo by Gretchen Struble

David Slayden

Associate Professor David Slayden is as much a mass communication renaissance man as the School's faculty has ever seen.

Consider his accomplishments :
• Film — Writer of “The Love Man,” a short film.
• Audio — Writer for a documentary on the distinctive Alabama gulf music known as the Muscle Shoals sound.
• Radio — Commentator for National Public Radio in Dallas.
• Multimedia — Creative director and writer-producer for a series of programs about physics.
• Fiction — Author of several short works.
• Non-fiction — Co-edited “Hate Speech,” winner of the Myers Center award for the Study of Human Rights in North America, outstanding book for 1995 and the James Madison Award for First Amendment studies in 1996.

He joined the faculty in the fall.

What's even more impressive is that outside of academic circles, he's known mostly for his rapid rise to the lofty perch of executive creative director at a major international media conglomerate. It's a field in which his abilities are still very much in demand despite his move to the classroom a decade ago.

"I had never intended to not go back to teaching," he said. "It's very important to me. I liked being around students, around people who hadn't already made up their minds about everything. For me, it's a great opportunity to keep learning."

He brings his diverse expertise to students in the School through advertising, marketing and media studies courses.

"We wanted someone who continues to practice the work because it keeps the teacher in touch with his or her field," Associate Professor Brett Robbs said. "He does very exciting creative work on his own.

This year alone his creative work was recognized in ad industry publications, including Archive, Creativity and Print, and was included in the prestigious New York Festival. He was also a Clio finalist.

In November, Sage published Slayden's "Sound Bite Culture," dealing with the notion, he said, "that while we have more means than ever before to facilitate discourse, less real exchange is taking place."

"The things I write about are just things that I notice, and you notice the things that interest you," he said. "It's the contradictions in communications; what it pretends to be and what it really is."

Previously, Slayden was an associate professor and director of the creative program at Southern Methodist University's Center for Communication Arts, where he had joined the faculty in 1991.

That followed a five-year ascent through media organizations that culminated with his appointment as executive creative director of Mazer Corp. Along the way were stops as a contract scriptwriter for AIT and TV Ontario and as senior writer and producer for Handley & Miller Advertising.

"I think one of my basic talents is to see the connections between one thing I've done and another thing," he said. "To see how what you already know relates to what you need to learn. The advertising agency work was interesting; it was fun. But the thing is, you go into business with a Ph.D. and you know you can use it again.

"I'm motivated by staying interested, and if I'm not interested I don't stay in it. And I really missed having Christmas off."

Before that, Slayden held a variety of academic teaching and editing positions. He was an adjunct assistant professor and an associate instructor at Indiana University's Department of English; managing editor for Studies in Second Language Acquisition and coordinating editor for Haiti Today and Tomorrow: An Interdisciplinary Study; associate editor for Indiana University Press; book review editor and bibliographer for Victorian Studies and associate editor for An Anthology of American Popular Culture, Volume One.

Slayden received a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University in 1989, a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago in 1974 and a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy from Southern Illinois University in 1973.