A Critical Discourse Analysis of Higher Education President’s Email Communications in 2020 and 2021

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Abstract: Email communications from presidents to faculty, students, and staff communicate institutional priorities; they play an important role in shaping the ways that power, ideology, and influence are constructed and replicated across the institution (Serrano, 2018; McNaughtan & McNaughtan, 2018; Eddy, 2003; 2005; Briscoe, 2022). In this study, I explored presidential email communications sent between June 2020 and November 2021 across 11 public institutions in the United States. Eddy (2005; 2005) argued that university presidents have a responsibility to communicate as sense-makers during crises to help direct the campus conversation and to set the institutional agenda. As such, I sought better understanding of the nature of Higher Education presidential communications to expand knowledge of presidential communication styles and approaches to communicating institutional priorities. Specifically, using a Critical Discourse Analytic approach to data analysis, I sought to understand how the language used in emails were indicative of presidential and institutional priorities and if and how linguistic tool usage were utilized differently according to the topic.

Laura Parson is an Assistant Professor of Educational and Organizational Leadership in the School of Education at NDSU. Her Ph.D. is in Teaching & Learning, Higher Education from the University of North Dakota. Laura’s research seeks to identify where and how institutional disjunctures occur in higher education for women and members of minoritized groups. She is a qualitative methodologist, with a focus on ethnographic and discourse methods of inquiry. Her research questions seek to understand how policy, procedures, discourses, and institutional environments inform student experiences, and how the institution coordinates those factors through translocal practices. Building on that research, she uses policy and curriculum to recreate the teaching and learning environment in higher education to promote equitable and effective learning spaces. She maintains public scholarship at lauraparson.com.

By Dr. Parson

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This study explored the gendered nature of STEM higher education institution through a feminist critical discourse analysis of STEM course syllabi from a Midwest research university. I explored STEM syllabi to understand how linguistic features such as stance and interdiscursivity are used in the syllabus and how language and discourses used in the syllabus replicate the masculine nature of STEM education. Findings suggest that the discourses identified in the syllabi reinforce traditional STEM academic roles, and that power and gender in the STEM syllabi are revealed through exploration of the themes of knowledge, learning, and the teaching and learning environment created by the language used in the syllabus. These findings inform and extend understanding of the STEM syllabus and the STEM higher education institution and lead to recommendations about how to make the STEM syllabus more inclusive for women.

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In times of economic hardship and declining public support, institutions can generate more revenue or reduce expenditures, referred to as retrenchment, to meet their resource needs. Yet, scholarship on organizational approaches to retrenchment is scarce. Analysis of corpus data suggested that the language used in SRI and URU’s budget emails was tailored to generate support for university leadership’s authority and plans to resolve the crisis.

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