Bailey C. Benedict, Ph.D.

I have formally studied communication for well over a decade, but I have been trying to understand how people exchange information, build relationships, and collaborate for as long as I can remember. As an anxious kid, I found myself constantly analyzing messages and social environments, searching for patterns that might help me navigate growing up.

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I began college at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse as an undecided major. After briefly considering business (and quickly realizing College Algebra was not for me), I enrolled in a course titled Communicating Effectively. That class introduced me to the idea that communication is not just a skill, but a field of study. In a life-changing office hours conversation, a professor told me about graduate school. I realized I could spend my life studying how people make meaning and helping others communicate with more clarity and confidence.

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I earned my M.A. at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where I studied how employees experience and manage uncertainty after a coworker’s termination. I went on to complete my Ph.D. in Organizational Communication at Purdue University, with minors in Research Methods and Network Theory and Analysis. There, I deepened my focus on how social networks shape resilience and uncertainty, contributing to National Science Foundation–funded research on hurricane evacuation and recovery. My dissertation examined how survivors and helpers used online organizing to facilitate recovery after California’s 2018 Camp Fire.

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I now live and work in California’s wildfire-prone wildland–urban interface, a place that continually reminds me that resilience is not abstract and research matters for our collective futures.

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Today, I am an Assistant Professor of Management at California State University–San Bernardino. I teach business communication, organizational behavior, and leadership, and I study how individuals and communities use their social networks to manage uncertainty and build resilience. Through my teaching, research, and public scholarship, I aim to help people better understand the communication systems that shape their everyday lives and grow their confidence and competence as communicators.