Dr. Maureen Keeley-Vassberg, Ph.D. Communication Research

Dr. Keeley is the senior faculty member in the area of Interpersonal Communication. In the classroom, she encourages and challenges students to look at their own communication and to use pragmatic, theoretical, and scholarly knowledge to improve their lives and their relationships. Her courses include upper division Undergraduate courses and Master’s level courses in: Nonverbal Communication, Relational Communication, Family Communication, End-of-Life Communication, Interpersonal Communication, and Relational Health Communication.

Dr. Keeley is an applied communication researcher that focuses on the communication that occurs within close relationships in the midst of difficult situations. She utilizes theory to describe and explain the communication that focuses on health and/or relational challenges revealing the verbal and nonverbal messages that help people to gain meaning, grow, heal, and connect more fully with one another in the midst of strong emotions and life changes. The practical applications of her research make a real difference in people’s everyday lives. She is nationally recognized as one of the leading researchers on relational communication at the end of life. The nature of Dr. Keeley’s research calls primarily for the use of qualitative methodologies.

Dr. Keeley comes from a family filled with civil servants (police officers, fire fighters, and nurses) that placed a high value on helping and serving others. Her family’s values inspires Dr. Keeley to serve others by providing workshops for members of the community on final conversations, nonverbal, relational, and gender communication; she is active as a reviewer for numerous national and regional academic journals; and she is committed to meeting the needs of her department, college, and university.