Dr. Bell combines a love of teaching with a passion for communication

The X-Men have a fan in the Communication Department.

Dr. Chris Bell loves X-Men.

When asked his favorite superhero, Bell didn't even pause to think about it. "Nightcrawler. Far and away, not even a hesitation."

He even knows what power he would want. "Now that I think about it, probably Xavier," he said. "Xavier's pretty much got it on lockdown, really. The most powerful mutant in the world; why wouldn't you want that?"

Bell is director of the Center for Excellence in Communication. There, he directs a staff of 22 students, both graduate and undergraduate.

These students are quite important to him. "My favorite part of the job, honestly, and it's going to sound like I'm just trying to get in good, but I love my students, particularly the students that work for me."

The Center for Excellence in Communication, formerly the Center for Oral Communication, is just one of the five Centers for Academic Excellence. It is located in Columbine Hall, room 312, directly across from the Writing Center.

As the director of the Communication Center, Bell does not just tutor students.

He said, "I do a variety of guest lectures; I come in and do presentations for people; I meet with faculty members to figure out how to better incorporate communication into their curriculum, no matter what discipline it is."

Bell is also an assistant professor attendant in the Communication Department. "I'm in an interesting position," he said, "because I have all of the responsibilities of a junior faculty member, but then I also have the responsibilities of running the center." Because of this, Bell stays quite busy.

"I juggle a lot of stuff all day," he said. "Between meetings and classes, I stay hoppin'."

In addition to all of his guest presentations and responsibilities as the director of the Communication Center, Bell teaches classes Mondays through Wednesdays.

This isn't a hardship for him, though. He said, "That's why I decided I wanted to be a professor in the first place, because I wanted to work with students. All the other professor stuff is sort of secondary to that, really."

As far as a normal day for Bell, apparently there isn't one. "It sounds a little cliché, but there really is no such thing as a normal day," he said, chuckling.

Bell teaches several cultural studies classes. He said, "Right now, I'm teaching a course on race, class and gender representations in the media, how different groups are represented."

In the spring, Bell will be teaching COMM 4350, Critical Analysis of Popular Culture. The class looks at cultural artifacts, things like books, movies, comic books and music, and then analyzes them.

Bell said, "We say, ‘what tools do we use to take this apart to find out what meaning is being made here?'"

Despite all of this, Bell still finds time for some fun. He and two other students have made an intercollegiate Starcraft team, and according to him, "Lots of people don't like to play us anymore."