Associate Professor Patricia Covarrubias received an appointment in the Department of Communication and Journalism at The University of New Mexico in 2005. Covarrubias’ teaching philosophy is grounded in the premise that education implicates knowing how to use the whole of oneself. As such, her teaching objectives involve helping students learn to use their human totality—intellect, emotions, and spirit—in the process of learning. Further, her research goals include contributing to ethnographic research methods, cultural and intercultural communication, language and social interaction, metaphors as communication, cultural/intercultural communication in health contexts, racialized communication, and the much understudied communicative aspect of communicative silence. She regularly offers undergraduate and graduate students courses in intercultural communication. She regularly addresses these topics with undergraduate and graduate students in courses focused on intercultural communication.

Education

• PhD in Cultural/Intercultural Communication, University of Washington (1999)
• MA in French language and Literature, California State University (1978)
• BA in French Language and Literature, California State University (1973)