Catherine Becker, Associate Professor of Communication

From "New Consciousness, New Knowledge" │UH Hilo Faculty Research & Scholarly Activity

Associate Professor Becker examines the ways communication contributes to the transformation of organizational, cultural, or family systems. She was the first in academia to test Cultural Convergence Theory.

Catherine Becker is an associate professor of communication at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Her research examines the ways that communication contributes to the transformation of individuals and systems, for example, organizational, cultural, or family systems. She explores the ways communication is linked to transformation using quantitative, qualitative, and creative approaches.

“My research has the potential to transform the field of communication because it crosses methodological and disciplinary lines, it forges connections that didn’t exist previously,” she explains. “It offers alternative approaches, ways of knowing, and teaching. I use new forms of ethnography and alternative forms of representation to encourage new paradigms, perspectives, and possibilities.”

Read more...

Cultivating Authenticity

Cultivating Authenticity interview by Jocelyn Mercado

Professing Change

By Jessica Kirkwood

As humanity faces ecological degradation, increasing social and economic inequality and a growing sense of fear, dissatisfaction and unrest, UH-Hilo Professor Dr. Catherine Becker wants her students to imagine and create a Hawai‘I that is environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually uplifting. She is purely their facilitator, their guide.

As an eccentric, honest and holistic intellectual, Catherine Becker has devoted her life to studying the field of communications. With unique vision, some might say “mana,” she has fashioned some contemporary, imperative and transformative upper-division online classes, namely ‘Sustainability, Communication and Culture’.

Read more: Professing Change