You may notice a distinct tone of confidence in what I post on this site. How do I (think I) “know” all this?
I gratefully credit three pretty special sources, as I will detail below, for anyone interested. For those only marginally interested in “how I came to know all this,” I’ll start with a relatively short version. If you want to know more, you can read the longer version, which will follow.
The Skinny
Let’s start with the short (for me!) version of my basis for writing on this site with an attitude that is not only confident in what I say but likewise confident in my various criticisms (and you’ll find plenty of those here) of many “trendy” beliefs and practices as regards present-day writing (also speaking and listening – and even driving out in traffic!).
First, I was “born into” (by both genetics and upbringing) a lifelong love and aptitude for writing and speaking in the English language. Both maternal grandparents earned significant respect (state-wide and even nationally) for their contributions to the teaching of English and speech; furthermore, they raised a writing prodigy, namely, my mom.
Secondly, my formal education in communication features not just a lot of 4.0 semesters – across 13 years, total, of full-time collegiate study – but also lots of writing recognition and other college distinctions and awards, from campus-wide to national, as well as writing and editing positions on several college newspapers and literary magazines.
“Skinny” builds a dep’t — and sets a teaching record
Along with my upbringing and formal education, I thirdly count as foundational my unbelievable (at least, to me, looking back) record of university instruction and leadership, including not just a massive teaching record but also initiating and developing, from scratch, a university department in my field of communication.
In this “short version” of my basis for putting up this site, please allow me to commit a momentous, but relevant, brag: I, personally, have taught more university-level course sections than any faculty member, in any major, at any school, in the history of higher education in my adopted home state of Colorado – possibly in the nation! (That last one’s hard to verify, so let’s call it a maybe.)
Including almost 300 classes (mostly in communication and mostly to adults) taught for Denver’s Regis University and 100+ classes taught (mostly writing and rhetoric) at the University of Colorado, across 32 very-busy years, I have gained a boatload (think Titanic, ha ha) of relevant experience, not just in the classroom but also at home, grading approximately 50,000 papers and speeches.
Just as significantly, that’s a heck of a lot of *groups* organized, curated, and taught – and each one a “creature” of its own. For many reasons (including that I could even “get” all that work!), I just went out and out-taught the field, in my state and beyond. I’m sure you won’t begrudge me a little pride in that.
Also, I will specify that, during my first decade (of 30+ years) at Denver’s Regis University, I initiated, led into viability and then prominence (with lots of help, of course) my *very own* communication department.
In doing so, I enjoyed enormous freedom, as I became well known everywhere I went on campus. The courses I thought we should develop and offer, we built, staffed, and rocked! Our classes frequently overfilled, requiring new sections added during registration, meaning more work for everybody, leading to a happy faculty to manage.
Any prospective faculty applicant who blew me away, I could hire, almost on the spot. For a few years, there, *what I said went*, as the saying goes. Thusly, I was able to architect and build a theory-rich, successful, and noticeably profitable communication department. I take pride there.
These three life-phases – birth and upbringing, education, and teaching career – did produce a pretty deep and also broad knowledge of my field of communication, especially as regards language and writing. I rarely, if ever, meet a fellow scholar with “all three degrees” (BA, MA, PhD) in communication, though I’m sure some are out there. I’ve shown a lot of commitment to my field – and to my students.
Believe it or not, that’s the “short version” of why I write what I write with a distinct air of confidence. If “that was plenty,” feel free to move onto the other places on this website – especially the Blog, where I invite you to contribute your own insights and experience.
On the other hand, if you care to peruse further *relevant* (to this website) biographical highlights (sorry, but the “love-life tell-all” part comes only in the book edition!), here’s a healthy serving that’s definitely not for those counting calories.
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Skinny’s heading for downright chubby
I’m not sure who needs or even wants to read all this, but I think some reasonable readers might wonder where I “get off,” claiming the right to “reformulate” major understandings of English grammar and structure – and the teaching of these – and also to criticize not just the teaching, but also some of our current “trendy” practices in how we speak and write these days.
A “Gram” of learning goes a long way
During my upbringing in Apalachin, NY (schooled in nearby Vestal), my locally famous (as a news-making teacher in English and the humanities) and much-loved grandmother, Elsie Kavanagh, mightily influenced my connection with language, from childhood through adulthood.
For as long as I can remember, Gram always lived near-by, at one point right next door to us and at another point living right there with us in our family home. From kindergarten through my first round of grad school, my life came with a built-in “tutor” of English, writing, and speech – not to mention a very worthy partner in debate.
As certain siblings and cousins can attest, rarely did any paper of ours make it to our teachers’ eyes before “Gram” had reviewed it, not just to make corrections and improvements, but to use it as a teaching tool for the next assignment.
Our gram didn’t just “proofread” our papers; she dismantled them. Then, with our “help,” possibly following the shedding of a few tears (not hers), the papers would become transformed into “essays,” to highlight the best in what we had brought to her. We loved it. Kinda.
“There. See how the transitions pull together the essay, while staying close to the thesis?” “Uh- I couldn’t have said it better, myself, Gram.”
And Gram didn’t stop with grammar. Even our pronunciation and enunciation received reliable and steady critique: “It’s not ‘err,’ like “air.” You must say “err,” rhymes with her! Say it three times: Er, er, er.”)
“Er, Er, Er. Now, are we *gonna* play gin-rummy?”
She’d correct me, “Are we *going to* play gin rummy?” Not to her down, I’d reply with the predictable (in our family) wise-guy come-back,”I asked you first! Are we gonna play or not?”
Then she’d make a face and pretend disapproval. “You think you’re so funny!” As long as I properly *enunciated* “going to” the next few times, I wouldn’t have to hear about it again – at least not that night.
At one point in her career, she even coached her high school debate team, as I heard about now and then, and every story came with a clear-cut lesson, warning, or moral. The study of *rhetoric* definitely started early in my life.
In other stories (or in the same ones!), Gram would impart her *teaching* philosophies and practices. These stories laid for me an early and stalwart foundation for learning how to teach – whether striving to channel difficult students into productivity or channeling the fastest learners into stardom. Gram taught it, and I did my best to learn it. I’m proud to share that a great many “someday students” of mine owe to her a majority of the thanks that, over the decades, they’ve offered to me.
What pride she eventually took in my career, which, indeed, came to emulated hers, except not in high school, but college, where, I too, found myself at one point coaching the debate team!
It’s a family affair
Some things do run in the family. As I have elaborated above, these traits include a natural affinity for language and teaching. Considering my own parents, not to mention siblings (I was born fourth of six kids), I can add a third in-born love, connected to the other two. I refer to both the playing and teaching of music.
Many people in and around Ithaca, NY knew my mom, Kay Zizzi, as a fabulous singer, trained in opera and busy her whole adult life on nightclub stages, where she earned the nickname, “the Carmen McRae of the Finger Lakes.” I have lots of digitized songs. I’ll have to post a couple on here.
Sad to say, she died of coronary failure at the young age of 47, in fact, right on her way to a Friday night singing job in Ithaca, where she proudly fronted a jazz combo, the Kay Zizzi Trio.
But not as many know of my mom’s lifelong excellence in writing and language, starting in middle school, when she won a national essay competition. She read books voraciously (our house overflowed with them), and she loved word puzzles, as I still do, myself. She took some pride in being able to sing operas in several languages.
You might wonder, what kind of girl even enters national essay contests in “junior high”? I’ll give you a hint. Look at her parents. You’ve already read a bit about her mom (aka Gram); well, her dad (my long-deceased Grandpa Jim), had likewise earned a local and statewide reputation in speech.
Indeed, my grandfather, James P. Kavanagh, not only made it into the local papers regularly for his successful exploits teaching English and public speaking (including the success of his debate squad in Binghamton, NY), but he was elected and served (in the 1940s) as the president of the New York State Speech Association.
I couldn’t be prouder of that. Interestingly, he died quite young (in his mid-50s) almost exactly nine months (minus just one day!) from the day I was born. A prominent leader in speech and education, Grandpa Jim died quite suddenly . . . and, nine months later, from his eldest of four daughters, “out pops Mikey,” a rare redhead in the family, just as he’d been. Kindred spirits? I think so.
My dad, Enrico Zizzi – born of parents who, as teenagers, emigrated from Italy to the US in the 1910s – took some pride in his unique style of speaking and writing (tinged with be-bop attitudes). But his significant fame (across NYS) arose from his gifts as a musician, arranger, band leader, music store owner, and, especially, teacher of music at every level (K-12) of public education.
During his WWII duty in the US Navy, dad mostly played his guitar, a rhythm instrument in those days, in big bands and small groups, often for visiting for dignitaries. After that, Dad (with help from the GI Bill – and Mom’s paper editing) earned his MA in music education at Ithaca College end ended up teaching for Vestal Central Schools (winner of countless state awards and championships), where Gram had also taught and where we kids went to school.
As a music teacher, he did it all, from the large elementary-school orchestras he’d recruit and teach, to award-winning high school jazz bands he’d take into the recording studio. Toward the end, he opened his popular music store and studio (for hundreds of students per week) the Guitar Center, where all of us “Zizzi kids” worked from childhood on.
Of course, I am proud that the New York State Legislature proclaimed “Ricco Zizzi Appreciation Day”) to coincide with his quite-public “celebration of life,” shortly after his demise from cancer in the late ’90s.
I guess you can tell that I’m pretty proud of my roots, as regards both nature and nurture. The combination of those got me off to a good start, for an eventual career in communication and education marked by nice honors and remarkable events, as I will relay in my next segment of About Mike.
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With my upbringing now clarified some, allow me to canvas my education in the communication field – though delayed seven (interesting and fruitful) years between my freshman and sophomore years of college.
Yes, for seven years I worked “real jobs,” not in academia but as a college drop-out. I had actually made the President’s List (required a GPA of 3.75+) my freshman year at CU-Boulder. At least my mom got to see that, before dying of a stroke less than two years later. But, for many reasons, it took me seven years to get “back to” college – and then I never left!
From college drop-out to valedictorian
In my final (pre-academic) job, I had made it to technical writer at a huge computer company in Colorado, having begun there on the factory floor. So I went “back to school” as already a professional writer, which no doubt aided me in finishing first in my class (of about 1600 graduates) at the State University of New York, College at Oswego (BA,’87), a premier school, among the many SUNY campuses across the state, for those in my new-found major of communication.
In my final (pre-academic) job, I had made it to technical writer at a huge computer company in Colorado, having begun there on the factory floor. So I went “back to school” as already a professional writer, which no doubt aided me in finishing first in my class (of about 1600 graduates) at the State University of New York, College at Oswego (BA,’87), a premier school, among the many SUNY campuses across the state, for those in my new-found major of communication.
My mom may have been long-departed by this time of my life, but my dad and Gram sure were proud of the (much-delayed) success of their former college drop-out turned valedictorian. Finally! And that success (along with several writing and editorial roles for different campus publications) led to a full, two-year fellowship (free tuition, plus I got a paycheck!) to study for my master’s in speech communication at the University of Maryland (MA, ’89). Yes, they paid me to study there – pretty cool.
In fact, in recruiting me, they made sure I knew that I was the only master’s student at Maryland ever to be offered a fellowship guaranteed for *both* years of the MA program. Normally, with master’s fellowships, as with teaching assistantships, the second year is contingent on doing well the first year. Maryland made that sweet and unprecedented offer, hoping (successfully) to out-bid Cornell, their Ivy League competitor, who had likewise offered me a “full ride” to study there for my master’s.
My very first research paper there won a national award for graduate research (competing with others’ PhD dissertation work), so I did get off to a good start at UM, along the way to a beefy (sorry vegans) and eventful college “career.”
That paper, a statistical analysis of data I gathered myself regarding “the effect of speaker upon listener” brought me right into the heart, nationally, of the community of scholars who focus on listening, including the pioneer revered by that society as “the father of listening, Ralph G Nichols. Do I, to this day, still possess and cherish hand written letters from his retirement home, wherein he praised my work and encouraged me to carry the listening torch? Yes.
I finished up at Maryland with a master’s thesis in which I named and theorized “organizational listening,” arguing that “listening at work” is a special form of listening and needs its own model and understanding.
In all, and starting at the University of Maryland, I eventually adding to my bachelor’s degree a total of nine (!) further years of full-time and fully funded graduate study and research. I’m definitely educamated, as they say.
The final six-plus years of my graduate study (2004 – 2011) unfolded, starting some fifteen years later, at the University of Colorado, where I was blessed to study under not one, but four (!) still-teaching (if soon to retire) inductees of my field’s scholarly hall of fame, honored as “Distinguished Scholars” of the National Communication Association.
I will proudly point out that only two US universities could boast of two still-teaching NCA Distinguished Scholars on their faculty. Although no school in the country could boast of three such NCA honorees, CU actually had attracted four, and three of these agreed to serve on my five-person doctoral committee, two of whom had formerly served terms as president of the International Communication Association – the *worldwide* scholarly society in my field. Unbelievable.
Capping off my third year of doctoral study at CU, my academic pedigree helped me gain acceptance into that year’s annual “Doctoral Honors Conference” of NCA, where I rubbed elbows and exchanged ideas with a couple dozen of the brightest doctoral students in the US and also gained personal guidance and familiarity with several more of my field’s most notable professors, nationally and worldwide.
Talk about “learning from the source.” As a graduate student/scholar in communication, already a former department founder and head elsewhere (Regis University), I felt as if I had died and gone to heaven. No other PhD – of any era – in my field can claim such a doctoral committee. All four have since retired, so I think my “record” will stand for the long haul. Yes, that’s pretty special, and I hope not too boastful to note.
As for my scholarly focus at CU, I first studied “driving (cars and trucks) as rhetoric” – hence, my inclusion of “driving” in the Rhetoric and Persuasion section of the blog in this site – before focusing in on studying and theorizing “dialogue,” especially in settings of “teaching and learning” – leading to my 415-page doctoral dissertation, “An Anatomy of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning.”
Let’s just say that I learned to “theorize communication” under the close guidance (including a semester of special, one-on-one work together) of professor Robert Craig, the *founding editor* of a scholarly journal by the name of (drumroll) “Communication Theory.” I even served as teaching assistant for him for a course at CU by that very name, a course I had already written, as department head at Regis U, and taught for almost ten years. And now I am studying, one on one, even, under Name One, worldwide, in that very specialization? I still have a hard time believing that all of this (and a lot more at CU) really happened.
And my whole doctoral program, dissertation included, was “directed” by Karen Tracy, former editor of multiple scholarly journals (such as “Discourse and Society” and “Human Communication Research”) and pre-eminent leader in my main research methodology, “discourse analysis.” For six years, Karen pretty much “ruled my world,” at least my scholarly world, and I couldn’t have been luckier.
I owe an unrepayable debt to these legends in my field – including the third NCA Distinguished Scholar on my doctoral committee, the world-renowned Stan Deetz – but I owe the most to my main professor and director of my program and dissertation, Karen Tracy.
At Karen’s ultra-posh retirement dinner, the organizers actually selected me to make the final tribute speech (of maybe 15 or 20!) that evening, following heartfelt tributes from a pantheon of prominent scholars. She is rightfully revered across the global scholarly realm of the study of “discourse,” and I had her as director of my doctoral studies. I consider that honor among my most personally rewarding achievements. Including Karen and several others, I learned from the very best in my field, and I made a splash among them, myself.
Well, this may seem like my “life story,” but I am leaving out a lot, including my treasured fatherhood (sons Adam and Burke have made it into their 30s), my love life (for a separate book, and no shortage of stories to fill it), my contributions as a neighbor and community volunteer (including head coach of many youth baseball teams), and even my music writing, playing, and collecting. In fact, my large and wide-ranging collection of awesome vinyl takes up a good chunk of my house.
You might take a bit of interest in some of that, but little of it bears directly on this new (started fall, ’25) project and how I (claim to) know what I know – about communication, generally, and writing, specifically.
As for my post-college (sometimes during) teaching career, I have snuck, into the above discussion of my youth and education, a few facts as regards the that side of “my academic life,” so I will finish up on that topic in briefer style, although the time period involved far exceeds that of my upbringing and education.
With my fresh master’s in hand, I returned to Colorado (where I had lived and worked during my “college drop-out” years) and promptly applied to teach at Regis University in Denver. From Maryland, I had researched the school and discovered that I liked their teaching-focused Jesuit mission.
Just as importantly, I saw that their faculty rolls included some members with “just” master’s degrees, as I offered. They did not necessarily require a PhD, so there was hope for me! I knew I would someday “go back” one more time and get my PhD, but right then, following a whirlwind of undergraduate, then graduate, study and achievement, I needed a break from school. I wanted to teach!
Right away, the school’s growing (soon to become gigantic) adult program – not “night school” but a serious and challenging “degree-completion” program – picked me up. It took a while (almost a whole year) to get “properly” (to me!) noticed, but once I did, a lot happened in a hurry.
Since their entire communication “program” entailed just one course, Speech Communication (aka public speaking) and they already had a couple people who could teach that, classes for me to teach were hard to come by. I needed to find a way to branch out, just to get enough work to pay for my notoriously low-budget life. I didn’t need much money, but I did need some!
Fate and other angels of fortune flapped their invisible wings, and, before I knew it, I had become a very busy teacher of writing and composition. For the record, I taught my first university-level writing course (EN 203, Intermediate Composition) in the Fall term, 1991). I was also teaching speech, by then, but the writing courses came fast and furious, in a hurry. I would meet new colleagues who would hear my distinctive name and say “Oh yes, I’ve heard of you. Mike Zizzi, the new English teacher.” I would reply, “Well, yes, for now.”
I promised to speed up this section, so I’ll just fast-forward to getting elected by my fellow faculty (numbering, including mostly adjuncts, as I was, well over 500 members at that time – within five years to swell to nearly 1,000), as the sole voting member (among faculty) on my school’s mighty “academic council.” And now that I was rubbing elbows with deans and even the university president, I gained a bunch of clout.
Because of that, and the success of a few “experimental” courses I had pushed for (new courses in communication) I found myself in charge of “the new major,” mainly communication. As “Lead Faculty” (department head and representative), I enjoyed wide authority and could build out my department pretty much any way I wanted. All formal course and curricular decisions had to go through the dreaded “academic council” (and often died there), but I was serving as the “faculty representative” on that very council. Get the idea?
At the point where the recently hired dean was now resigning under pressure, I was asked to apply for his position – by the assistant dean! I quickly became one of two finalists, but my lack of a PhD did matter at this point, which sparked my long-anticipated return to graduate school, at CU, as I have described above.
“My” comm. department thrived, across several Regis campuses, and various administrators just “looked the other way” as I broke rule after rule, including rules about how many courses could be taught by one faculty member. As a private school, we had to make money to survive and even grow, as we were doing at high speed, with my department leading the growth.
I won numerous teaching awards and other honors and gained some new and high-profile roles at Regis. For just one example, I overhauled the school’s dysfunctional “admissions essay” process, revising the whole system from scratch. Then, week after week, for about four years, I personally “assessed” (including a formal and impactful “rating” I’d invented), each and every admissions essay that came into the now-gigantic adult program, and hundreds of these essays came in yearly. Among other things, my rating determined who would be required to take a remedial writing class – and who wouldn’t.
All of that, including my willingness to drive to and teach at several campuses, even the one (Ft. Collins) 70+ miles from home, led to my accumulating a career teaching load that, as strong evidence attests (by a hefty margin, I must say), surpassed that of any faculty member ever at Regis and, in fact, at any university in Colorado, in any major! Few faculty would seek this record (in fact, I didn’t; it just happened). Most university faculty operate in the belief that “the more important you are, the less you ‘have to’ teach.” I always believed (and still do) the opposite: “the more important you are, the more you ‘get to’ to teach.”
I just wanted you, dear reader, to know who, four years after my retirement from all of the above, is now writing this website and blog, “just for you.”
Yes, in the here-and-now,” this is “just for you.” You’re the one doing the reading. Still, I use the quote marks there, to indicate “special meaning.” Otherwise, I would call “just for you” (in a public context, like advertising) little more than marketing-smelling “bullshit.” I may spew a lot in your direction, but never bullshit. I prefer to “err” on the side of caution, as regards truthfulness, with you and everyone else. You’ll see.
Since well trained, for my PhD, in writing “communication theory,” I could not help myself – while working full time (plus) at CU’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric – from developing an original “theory of sentence structure” (among other theories developed) to help explain and teach writing.
Across all my writing classes (whether for freshmen or upperclassmen) at CU, we never used a textbook. I look back in amazement that I got away with that. I would explain, day one, that what I would be teaching them isn’t be found in any textbook “until and unless I write it.” Well, I’m writing it now, right here, and “just for you.”
Furthermore, whether teaching freshmen or graduating seniors, I saw each class as my personal “laboratory” for testing and refining my system, which evolved semester by semester, year by year. Every single class became a significant event in a long-term experiment.
More and more, with the passing years, my students shined, and their grades and opportunities flourished beyond all expectations (except mine). Check out my very public reviews on ratemyprofessors.com (these earned at the University of Colorado under the major, communication), and you will see what I mean.
Most profs despise that often-nasty review site. They write off their terrible reviews, made embarrassingly public there, as coming from “a few disgruntled underperformers who didn’t like their grades”). My students loved the grades they earned. I saw to that. And if you look there, you will find super reviews in marked abundance, not angry vitriol posted by “just a few cranks.”
On different parts of this site, you will find a number of theories of mine, usually identified as such. Open your mind, and I will open your world. I want your voice in the chorus. For that, you may need to tune it up some, and, if you do your part, I can get you there.
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In sum, through no merit of my own I was born into and raised by legendary and beloved teachers – of mostly English, along with music. While I do still write songs and play bass in and around my neighborhood, that is just for fun. I may love the music, but my education and experience have always focused more on the “the lyrics” (of life).
Looking back, I can see that my skills in writing (and learning) led me to an education I could never have dreamed of; before, during, and after that, I went on to teach more college classes than anyone in Colorado, ever, while staying true to my chosen and beloved field, communication, ultimately specializing back where I started: in writing.
I’ve loved teaching writing to a great many successful students. And now I want to teach, you, too. Study hard, and you will become able to get “the A,” pretty much anywhere you go, as has often happened for my students. I hope it happens for you. If you’ll do your part, I’ll do mine.