George Mason Communication Center hires new Director to assist Students and steer Growth 

Fairfax - The Communication Center at George Mason University has hired Nick Tatum as its new director to bring fresh ideas and focus, and to explore new ways it can benefit students. Tatum will start full-time in January.

The communication center has grown since it was established in fall 2018. The center assists an average of 1,000 students in the Communication 101 course per semester and over 400 students over the summer with various outlines, research, delivery of speeches and more.

“One of the things I’m really excited about having Nick join us is that he is a tremendous scholar with an outstanding publication record. He has done a lot of administrative work with basic courses, with communication centers, with media centers, which will also be valuable as we partner with the STAR lab,” said Melissa Broeckelman-Post, Associate Professor and basic course Director in the Communication Department for George Mason University.

Broeckelman-Post said the department decided they needed someone who could devote their full-time efforts to the communication center. She noted the organization’s success and continuous potential, adding the new position was established to focus on the future and ways the center could further benefit students not just in the communication course but in non-communication departments as well.

“Tatum also is a fantastic teacher who is really enthusiastic and really able to work with other people well to build some of those connections and is excited about and already thinking about some of the great opportunities.”

Tatum received his undergraduate degree in family studies at Abilene Christian University (ACU) in Abilene, Texas and went on to get his master’s in communication. He was a teaching assistant and conducted research in leadership and instructional communication. Tatum says this led him to apply and be accepted in the Ph.D. program of instructional communication at the University of Kentucky. Halfway through that Ph.D. program, Tatum accepted a full-time professor position and continued his Ph.D. program at ACU.

“This is my first year where I’m not teaching and being a Ph.D. student,” said Tatum,

“but I’m ready and excited to move to a bigger city and have more opportunity which kind of is the thing that led me to apply to the Mason job.”