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A view of the Linfield University McMinnville Campus academic quad on an early winter morning with the sun shining.

Mark McPhail

Mark McPhail

Portrait of Mark McPhailInterim Vice President for Academic Affairs/Provost

Mark McPhail was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and began his career in communication at Emerson College where he graduated Magna Cum Laude, earning a degree and teaching certificate in secondary education, and serving as the senior speaker for his graduating class. Since 1983, McPhail has presented numerous papers at national and regional conferences and published scholarly essays in state, regional, national and international books and journals.

McPhail's interests include photography, martial arts, scuba diving and recumbent tricycling. He enjoys traveling, cooking and Japanese whiskey. He hopes to learn to play a musical instrument to honor the legacies of his parents, Natalie and Robson McPhail.

Professional resume

  • Education

    • BS, speech and secondary education, Emerson College
    • MA, performance studies, Northwestern University
    • Ph.D., rhetoric and public address, University of Massachusetts Amherst

  • Experience

    • Indiana University Northwest
    • The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
    • Southern Methodist University
    • Miami University of Ohio
    • Northwestern University (Van Zelst Lecturer in Communication)
    • The University of Utah
    • Wayne State University
    • The University of Michigan
    • Central New England College
    • Emerson College

  • Publications and awards

    McPhail is the author of Zen in the Art of Rhetoric: An Inquiry into Coherence, published by the State University of New York Press, and The Rhetoric of Racism Revisited: Reparations or Separation, published by Rowman and Littlefield.

    His research has appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, the Howard Journal of Communications, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Qualitative Inquiry and Rhetoric Review. McPhail's creative work has appeared in Dark Horse Magazine and The American Literary Review, and his photography has been exhibited at the African American Museum in Dallas Texas, and the Crossman Gallery, Roberta’s Gallery and the Cultural Arts Center in Whitewater Wisconsin.

    McPhail is included in Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities, and Who's Who Among America’s Teachers, and has received a number of awards including the Albert J. Colton Memorial Research Fellowship, the University of Utah's Tanner Humanities Fellowship, the National Communication Association's Karl Wallace Memorial Award and Southern Methodist University’s Honoring our Professor’s Excellence (HOPE) Award.