Dr. Amanda G. McKendree is an Assistant Director of the Kaneb Center. 

As Assistant Director, Dr. McKendree coordinates University-wide graduate student programming and manages a staff of Graduate Student Associates in developing and facilitating teaching assistant orientations, pedagogy workshops, certificate programs, as well as teaching apprenticeships/fellowships. She also consults regularly with graduate students, faculty, and departments, and provides research services on teaching and learning topics.  

Dr. McKendree’s teaching interests include presentations and argumentation, business communication, gendered communication, and integrated marketing communication. Her areas of research activity include crisis communication, conflict communication, business communication pedagogy, and graduate student preparation for the professorate.

Current research projects include a book manuscript on conflict communication with funding from the University of Notre Dame Faculty Research Support Program Initiation Grant and communication perspectives on academic leadership at the presidential level with funding provided by the National Communication Association.  She is published in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Identity, Business Communication Quarterly, Teaching Ideas for the Basic Communication Course, and Review of Communication.

She serves as a member of the Executive Council for the Pennsylvania Communication Association and the Midwest Regional Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Consortium. Additionally, Dr. McKendree presents regularly at the National Communication Association, Eastern Communication Association, and Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education conferences.

Dr. McKendree received her BA in Global Policy Studies from Chatham University and MPA in Nonprofit/Public Management from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.  After a one-year fellowship in public affairs at the Coro Center for Civic Leadership and Carnegie Mellon University, she received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric at Duquesne University.