She Speaks, Everyone Thinks: Hailey Adkisson

She emerges from her office and makes her way to the classroom, class starts in five minutes. Her face is seemingly expressionless. She clutches a tan hydro-flask with one hand and a clipboard with the attendance and lecture notes in the other, and marches to the classroom. It's a Tuesday afternoon and the weather is wonderful in Albany, Oregon and first year professor Hailey Adkisson is about to give a lengthy lecture on conflict in her communication 218 class.

Adkisson turns the corner to greet a few early students waiting outside with smiles. She unlocks the door, turns on the light and assumes her position behind a tall wooden, beige podium. More people come in and make themselves comfortable in their seat until the classroom is filled up with two dozen students.

Before class begins she gives details to the class about the upcoming final and how the criteria will be broken down. The shortest person in the room, but undoubtedly the most recognizable, commands attention with each sentence. Some take notes even. Unfortunately for those who aren't comfortable speaking aloud to the class, the final exam will be a verbal presentation about some of the positive experiences gained from exploring another culture.

"Time limits?" one student asks aloud to the front of the classroom.

"No more than five minutes, no less than two." She replies. Then there are no questions.

Adkisson gives each student a number one through four, instructing them each to say their number as the room counts up then tell them each to group up with the number they got. The students group into fours and fives to a corner of the room.

At this point she announces the students are to "write the word conflict on the whiteboard and brainstorm a list of names, phrases, or emotions when you hear the word conflict."

The four groups exchange a flurry of ideas and thoughts. The only challenging part about this exercise, put your thoughts into words and have a discussion. Adkisson sits atop her desk, left leg over her right and looks on to each of the five groups, smiling in content with the state of each group discussion.

This idea of social interaction and constructive ideas being shared among minds young and old is also a theme for the discussion board that the Civil Discourse Club uses to understand other points of view.

Mark Uristo, the official advisor for the Civi Discourse Club, said he "reached out to Hailey for help [with the club] because she has a lot of experience with facilitating civil discourse based on her work at North Dakota State."

Adkisson gets her desire for civil discourse from a former advisor she had during graduate school. She said that "she had a big influence on me, not nessecarily teaching, but I just really respected her teaching style. The bulk of it [the class] was just sitting around discussing ideas. She would challenge you to think, you would respond, and she would say 'tell me more'". Adkisson goes on to say "her advise translated well beyon the classroom."

Infact, before she entered NDSU for her MA in Speech Communication, she spent two years as an AmeriCorps VISTA serving in Winatchee, Washington and Moorhead, Minnesoda.