José Carlos del Ama

Professional Assessment

Personal Narrative

General Considerations

In the Spring of 2012, I received the confirmation of my promotion to professor by the Board of Regents of the Connecticut State University System. I started my academic activity at Central Connecticut State University in the Fall of 2003. That was my second experience at an American University after one year working as an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut. Previously, I had spent six years working at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität (Mainz, Germany), four as a teaching assistant and two as an assistant professor. In addition to that, I have been since 1999 profesor visitante (visiting professor) at the Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, Spain), where I have imparted courses for doctoral candidates and master lectures for students and faculty. Now, I am submitting this file for a six-year assessment. In this narrative, I will emphasize my achievements in the four categories established in the AAUP collective bargain from the academic year 2018, when I submitted my first six-year professional assessment.

The last six academic years (2018-2024) have been very productive and rewarding. I had the opportunity to write several articles and read a good number of papers at international conferences. In addition to this intense creative activity, I have been able to play the leading role in the curricular development of our department, adding new courses to our curriculum and offering special studies courses that responded to the frantic development in the mass communication paradigm brought about by the new digital communication technologies. I have created new courses in different areas: Public Opinion Theory and Research, Media Studies and Audiovisual Narrative. 

In general, I consider myself extremely fortunate to work for Central Connecticut State University, an institution that allows me to keep learning and expanding my vital and intellectual horizons. I cannot imagine a more rewarding activity than higher education. Creating and transmitting knowledge is my passion, and I can develop it at Central Connecticut State University without any concern or restraint. I think my contributions to the institution, both at departmental and institutional level, correspond to what I receive from it. I have been an active member of Central community, becoming involved in and leading different committees and associations and participating in many of the events and activities this vibrant place offers. 

Load Credit Activity

Teaching Philosophy

When I decided to accept the tenure track position at CCSU’s communication department, I was making a declaration of principles: Education is the most important of all human institutions. Education opens horizons for individual development and self-fulfillment and constitutes the only basis for a sound and vigorous society. 

I am devoted with heart and soul to the mission of higher education. I believe that the ideal of education is not just the transmission of knowledge. Our social mission is to help form free and responsible citizens, conscious of both their rights and the rights of their fellow citizens and committed to the obligations that mature citizenship implies. This is the mission tradition has entrusted to the public schools of Arts and Sciences. Thus, in addition to the academic contents, students develop in my courses a sense of responsibility and learn how to deal with freedom. Following Immanuel Kant’s logic, I consider these two terms, freedom and responsibility, to be synonymous. According to the author from Königsberg, freedom is nothing but the manifestation of the practical reason. And this concept implies absolute accountability for individual actions.

One of my priorities is always to get the students involved in the course dynamic. To achieve this goal, I always tried to avoid the monologue of the professor and to create a dialogue with the class. Students can express their previous knowledge, ideas and also prejudices about sometimes controversial subjects (public opinion issues, political communication, or mass media contents).

I try to create a balance in the grading assignments to exploit all the students’ potential. They find exams with different formats (multiple choices, essays, take-home exams) and a variety of assignments, such as essays or presentations based on specific research projects, theoretical and practical group projects, or interviews with experts in professional fields related to the subjects of the courses. In this way, I create a positive class dynamic that allows me to maintain high standards in academic expectations.

In addition, I offer the students the possibility to gain extra grading points by doing research and presenting to the class a subject related to the contents of the course. These voluntary assignments help me achieve my main goals: to increase students’ involvement in the class and to develop in them a sense of responsibility.

Courses Taught at CCSU

From the curricular offer of the Communication Department, I taught the following courses during the period of assessment:

COMM 115 Fundamentals of Communication, COMM 234 Introduction to Public Relations, COMM 220 – Introduction to Film History, COMM 230 Introduction to Mass Communication, COMM 319 Filmic Narrative, COMM 410 Public Opinion, COMM 431 Mass Media and Society and COMM 500 – Introduction to Graduate Studies in Communication.

In addition to those existing courses, I have added a series of courses to the department’s curriculum:

COMM 411 Public Opinion Research, COMM 432 Media in Film, COMM 319 Filmic Narrative, and COMM 510, Public Opinion Theory and Research. 

Furthermore, I have offered new subjects as Special Topics:

 485: Political Communication in the Age of Surveillance, 485: Digital Revolution and the Information Crisis, and 496 Study Abroad Programs in Spain.

The new additions (6 new subjects) bear witness to my constant search for intellectual challenges and the ambition to apply my research in the curricular development of the department.

The six years has been marked by the impact of the COVID pandemic on our teaching endeavors. In a matter of days, we had to convert all our courses into online lectures. This has been the most demanding undertaking in this area of assessment.  Fortunately, I was well equipped for the rapid transition since I had been a pioneer in the field of online instruction. I introduced online courses in our department and helped some of my colleagues design and implement their online courses. Still, being forced to rely exclusively on online platforms impelled me to design more sophisticated strategies and tools. Since the pandemic, I have developed Web-sites to deliver the contents of all my courses and produced and published around 100 video lectures.

I have added several courses to the departmental academic offer. COMM 411 Public Opinion Research is the most important of my academic emphases. In this course, I explore with my students the nature and social function of public opinion. To achieve this goal, the contents of the course are based on contemporary public opinion issues. The course has a strong research component. Participants learn the essentials of public opinion research, including sampling methods and data interpretation. Students in this course need to complete a project that encompasses the development of research questions, the design of the questionnaire and the data collection and interpretation. I have also designed a course on the subject of Public Opinion for the graduate program: COMM 510 Public Opinion Theory and Research. 

One of the most rewarding experiences at CCSU was the Study Abroad program I designed in cooperation with the Center for International Education. In the Summer of 2018, I took a group of about 15 students to Spain. Visiting the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, we studied how the political conflict between the Spanish state and the Catalan nationalist movement is reflected in the sports arena. To this end, we focused on the sports rivalry between the clubs Real Madrid and Fútbol Club Barcelona.

Finally, I want to mention in this six-year report the tremendous aid I found in the Internet to help me establish effective communication channels with my students – and not only in online courses. I have created sophisticated content platforms where my students can find all the material they need for my courses. Also, my evaluators can find on those platforms all the necessary examples of my syllabi, course contents, assignments, as well as of the students’ work.

Student Evaluations

In my file for the application to professor, I included a detailed statistical analysis of my students’ evaluations. There was a significant positive correlation between the average grade in the course and the score of the students’ satisfaction in the items that affected the instructor’s performance. The higher the average grade was, the more positively the students assessed my performance. This is a serious indicator of the lack of validity of the measuring instrument. Validity refers to the ability of the instrument to actually measure what it is supposed to measure. 

For this six-year assessment, I have not repeated the extenuating statistical analysis. Still, I observed that my students’ evaluations follow a different pattern. There is no significant difference in the evaluation of different courses. The reason may be that I have been focusing on upper-level courses (300 and 400 level and graduate courses), where grade fluctuation is imperceptible due to the stronger homogeneity of the groups. The 100 and 200-level courses taught during these six years were always scheduled during Winter or Summer terms. I have also experienced that the students in such special courses are highly motivated and more conscientious than in regular semester courses. This explains the homogeneity of both grades and evaluations.

Students, for the most part, respect and value my pedagogic approach. In the student evaluation questionnaire, 10 questions directly refer to the instructor’s perception. Question 7, which refers to the textbook used in my classes, is the one where the scores are lowest (but never below 3.5). There is a simple reason for this: I do not use textbooks, which may confuse the students when they have to answer that question. Plus, some students may not be used to working with the type of literature used in my regular courses. Most of the courses I am teaching now are at the 400 level. For advanced courses, I ask students to read original literature. This represents a significant amount of work for me since I must publish on the online platforms created for the different courses all the reading material as pdf documents. Students welcome this at the beginning of the term when I discuss the readings because they do not have to spend the money on any of the expensive textbooks they normally have to buy or rent for other courses. Still, reading Marshall McLuhan, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, or Jürgen Habermas is much more difficult than the contents of the usual textbooks. They struggle with the contents. This explains the lower appreciation that sometimes may appear in the teaching evaluations in that particular question. I will keep working with original literature, though, because I firmly believe that students in advanced courses should be able to cope with this type of reading material. It is an indispensable phase in their intellectual development. Furthermore, my advanced courses, such as Media in Film or Public Opinion, have a very well-defined focus, and there is no textbook in the market I could use.

The answer to questions 2, 3 and 6 provides an accurate idea of my teaching style. The questions refer to the command of the subject matter, the use of the class time and the stimulating content of the course. As I already stated in the teaching philosophy section, I strongly encourage class dialogue in my courses. I consider this pedagogic technique the most effective way to gain the attention of students and to enhance comprehension. Students appreciate my effort. The overwhelming majority of the students strongly agreed or agreed with the statements. This constant exchange of ideas in the course dynamic also explains why a high percentage of my students find my classes intellectually stimulating.

Examples of syllabi, assignments, students’ work

As I mentioned before, I have developed Web-sites for all my courses. On those Web-sites, you can find examples of the syllabi I use, the assignments and some samples of the students’ work:

SPECIAL COURSE:

Creative Activity

My research agenda has been determined by the research studies I started at the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Center at Central Connecticut State University, which I directed for over two years. Supported by the office of the provost, the LALCC designed and carried out a research project to identify possible factors that may explain the so-called achievement gap among Latino students, and based on factual knowledge, develop effective strategies to improve retention and graduation rates among our Latino student population.  This project initiated a research dynamic based on quantitative methods and focused on education that allowed me to work with an interdisciplinary team of researchers from different academic fields: Dr. Yaci Moni (psychology), Dr. Marisa Mealy (Social-Psychology), Dr. Yeojin Kim (Communication). As a communication scholar, I have been particularly interested in finding out the actual impact of media consumption habits – with special emphasis on social media – on the cultural level and academic performance of our current college student generation. In addition to this focus, I kept studying the nature of public opinion, its effects on individuals and society, and its social function. This main emphasis, public opinion, has opened for me two well-defined research directions: Public opinion in literature and philosophy and public opinion research. Finally, I always try to include projects in my research agenda on Mass Communication, with special emphasis on narrative storytelling. 

Public Opinion 

Public Opinion Research has been the pivot around which my whole academic career revolves. For several decades, I have been exploring the triangular relationship between public opinion, mass media and political power. I connect the study of mass media with my main emphasis of research: the study of public opinion contents and dynamics. I find it particularly fascinating how mass media and public opinion, through a complex system of mutual influences, determine the political and economic fate of individual, political or corporate actors. In recent years, my research has focused on how political actors try to extract political capital from issues and the role media play in this game for power. The three articles published in this direction: 

One of my main sources of academic pride has been my ability to publish in three main Western Languages: English, Spanish and German. I am always trying to find topics that would allow me to stay fit in the use of those languages. My project in German has been a study of how the human social nature appears as a weakness in three human ideals: Socrates, Jesus, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch. The social nature of the human being is an essential element in the study of public opinion dynamics. The title of the article:

The manuscript is now in the phase of revision. At the same time, I am exploring possible journals that specialize in interdisciplinary studies (sociology, philosophy, history) for submission.

Mass Media and Education

Different outcomes of our original study on the achievement gap among Latina/o students have been accepted in national and international conferences: the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science, the Biennial Congress of the International Academy for Intercultural Research and the International Social Sciences, Humanities and Education Research Conference. The research group has also published an article in the “Journal of Latina/o Psychology”, which is issued by the American Psychological Association:

Other papers published in the area of education:

Audiovisual Narrative

The social-psychological dimension of the concept of honor, which is the reason why I study it as an epiphenomenon of public opinion, has occupied me for years. This was the topic of my doctoral dissertation and the focus of the book I published at the Universidad de Navarra Press in 2012. I recently published an article focusing on the concept of honor in three popular criminal sagas: The Wire, The Sopranos, and Sons of Anarchy. Honor has been, for centuries, one of the most effective themes in narrative. Authors of fiction use frequently honor conflicts in order to create dramatic scenarios. Honor works as an effective catalysator of the action, for it originates conflicts the audience could easily identify themselves with. The effectiveness of honor as a narrative factor goes over time and space. This study analyzes the narrative function of honor in the above-mentioned TV shows. Since honor codes always have a moral content, the study also allows us to analyze the effect of the individual experience of honor on the whole group: the social function of honor. Finally, the success and popularity of the three criminal sagas also invite us to reflect on the relationship between the values protected by the honor codes in those criminal groups and the moral sentiments of the large audience of those shows:

Online Content Creation

As I mentioned in the Credit Load section of the narrative, I have created Web-sites for all my online or hybrid courses. Those online platforms include original content for the classes that students use as effective learning material. Such content is delivered in different formats: textual, audio and audiovisual. I have written learning units focusing on public opinion theory, filmic narrative or mass media effects and produced close to 100 video lectures. I wanted to include in this section some examples of those creative efforts:

Service to the University, the Department and the Community

Service to the University

In the course of my years of service at CCSU, my commitment with the Latino community has been growing in time quantity and intensity: From just participating, passively at the beginning and more actively in the later years, in the events organized by the different associations, to becoming a community leader, first as president of the Latin American Association, and recently as the director of the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Center in two different terms (2015-1017- 2019-20). The mission of the center, which had a strong academic component, expanded with special emphasis on supporting cultural events and research projects that help us improve the academic performance of our Latino students. Community outreach became one of the priorities of the center since we aspire to create mature and functional citizens with a strong sense of community. With the threat of a vaguely defined multicultural center, which might have absorbed and assimilated the LALCC, pending on our heads, I started a frantic activity in the three areas of the center’s mission: academic research, creating and distribution of culture and community outreach.

It would exceed the expectations and reasonable limits of this narrative if I described here all my achievements during my time as a director of the center. I will just refer to two of the highlights.

In October 2019, we organized the academic conference Living in las Américas: Migration and Communities. Scholars from different regions of the U.S. attended the conference. Some of the research projects of the center were presented in different panels.

In the Spring of 2019, we invited Latino families with children in the junior and senior year of high school to attend an informative event at CCSU. The goal of this action was to increase the recruitment of Latino students. The event was successful since practically all the families that attended the event completed the application to register at Central.

After my term as director, I have kept being active at the center. I was in charge of the Website until the marketing department took over, and participated in the activities organized by the current leadership.

Beyond my activity as director of the LALCC, I have been, since 2012 and until 2020, a member of the University’s Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee.

Service to the Department

Practically since I joined the department, I have been a member of both the departmental undergraduate and graduate curriculum committees.

Currently, I am the AAUP liaison of our department.

Promotion was another area in which I had the opportunity to serve our department and the university. For many years, since 2006, I was the official Web-master of the department. Our Web-site needed urgently to be updated because of the substantial changes implemented in both the graduate and the undergraduate programs. I also created new pages for our certificate program in public relations, as well as for open positions in the department. Updating the Web-site was probably the most time-demanding task of all my commitments to the department. I was managing the contents of the department’s Web-site until the marketing department took over in 2021.

Professional Activity

During the last six years, the timeframe that this narrative covers, I have visited at least one international conference every year. In each and every one of these conferences, I have participated actively with an oral paper presentation. Given the nature of my recent research, most of the conferences had a focus on education.

  • 17th Annual International of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI, Sevilla, Spain, November 2024) SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE AND MINIMUM WAGE. NEW AND OLD FACTORIES OF POLITICAL OPINION FORMATION
  • 8th International Conference on Communication and Media Studies (Madrid, Sapin, Universidad Complutense, September 2003). Media Consumption Habits and Current Concerns.
  • 17th Annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED, Valencia, Spain, March 2023) A MAP OF WORRIES – HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS IMPACTING THE PERCEIVED URGENCY OF ISSUES IN THE CURRENT COLLEGE GENERATION
  • 15th Annual International of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI, Sevilla, Spain, November, 2022) THE CULTURAL QUOTIENT SCALE: IN SEARCH FOR A CONSISTENT PREDICTOR OF ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
  • 14th Annual International of Education, Research, and innovation (ICERI, Sevilla, Spain, November, 2021) IMPACT OF MEDIA CONSUMPTION HABITS ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
  • 3rd International Conference on E-Education, E-Business and E-Technology (ICEBT, Madrid, Spain, 2019). Role and Impact of Social Media in the Latino Achievement Gap. 

I have been a member of the WAPOR (World Association for Public Opinion Research) for several years. This association, founded by my mentor in Germany, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, is the most important forum for Public Opinion research in the world. 

Finally, working with one of the colleagues in our department, Dr. Kim, we carried through a research project for the Connecticut Democracy Center (CTDC), a non-profit organization with the mission to inspire people of all ages to engage in civic life and strengthen their communities: specifically, promoting civics education, functional citizenship, civic engagement at all levels, and history awareness as a means to understanding the present. The CTDC is planning to launch an audiovisual streaming service that will help them fulfill its primal mission. Our two-step (qualitative and quantitative) research project yielded valuable information about the nature of the contents preferred for the potential users, the most effective formats and delivery methods, as well as the most frequently used access devices. We added to our research team two of our students: Mark Bissoni and Isabella Alfano.

Community Engagement

Of all my academic activities over the past 6 years, I am most proud of running the soccer program in New Britain during the pandemic, which I restarted in the Summer of 2020. I founded a non-profit organization with a group of parents from the city of New Britain: New Britain Soccer (NBS). We have seen first-hand the direct impact that a strong community-based sports program can have on kids, families, and urban communities. This was particularly clear during the lockdowns. To run the program during the restrictions was quite a challenge. We had to move our club through the several stages of the “return to play” process, making sure that parents and players comply with the guidelines of the Connecticut Junior Soccer Association. We were able to keep kids moving and away from their multiple screens during those dire times. I was the president of this organization for 6 years and am now the vice president.

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In conclusion, I truly believe that I have been an active and consequent member of Central Connecticut State University community. I was always willing to help colleagues in and outside my department. When asked to participate in the events organized on campus, I was always happy to do it. One of CCSU’s highlights during the academic year 2023/24 was the celebration of the Declaring Freedom event. The event was organized by Prof. Matthew Warshauer, from the History Department in March 2024. I participated actively in the event as a presenter in one of the sessions. I have helped several faculty colleagues organize and promote their film festivals, mostly designing promotional material, developing the event’s Web-site, and presenting some of the movies. I have also acted as an interpreter (Spanish-English) in several events with Spanish-speaking guests.

In 20 years of service at CCSU, I have not been subject to any disciplinary action.

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