Name:	Deborah Downing-Wilson
Education:	Ph.D. Student, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego M.A. in Communication, University of California, San Diego B.S. in Psychology, University College London. Special Emphasis: Evolutionary Psychology
Research Interests:	I am interested in the communication practices that create and sustain idiocultures and facilitate relations within and among small cultural groups.   I focus primarily on undergraduate student communities, examining the skills students develop on campus in order to build community, and on the relationships between these campus communities and the larger host culture.  I look at the process of negotiating the cultural (socio-economic, ethnic, racial) boundaries in campus life, at the ways community membership colors university experience, and in how the repertoire of skills our students take away from university experience may or may not serve them in later life. I am a member of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition where a common grounding in Cultural/Historical Activity Theory facilitates collaboration on issues of development and change.
ResearchMethods:	Q-Methodology Cultural Simulation Ethnographic Interview
Awards and appointments:	2005-2006 CalIT2 fellowship. 2007-2008 UCSD Graduate Representative to the Committee on Affirmative Action and Diversity - the Academic Senate
Teaching:	COHI 124 Deaf People in America  (TA Fall, 2007) COCU 100 Intro Communication and Culture  (TA Spring, 2007) COHI 100 Intro Communication and the Person  (TA Winter, 2006)  Com 115 The Design and Implementation of Social Learning Environments (TA Fall, 2006)
Conference:	2007 Conference of the International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity.  National Medical Library, Bethesda MD.  Paper presentation:  “Using Q method to investigate attitude change in undergraduate students”. 2007 Conference “Changing the Culture of the Academy”. UCBerkeley 2007 Western Conference on Service-Learning,  Point Loma Nazarene College