Joseph DeVito
Joseph A. DeVito | Hunter College
View Author's Vita
Contact
jadevito@earthlink.net
http://tcbdevito.blogspot.com/
Education
Joseph DeVito received his BA from Hunter College in 1960 (with a major in speech and a minor in Spanish), his MA from Temple University in 1962 (with a major in speech together with some sociology), and his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1964 (with a major in speech and a minor in linguistics). It was DeVito's advisor, Richard Murphy, who persuaded him to write a dissertation combining the insights of speech and linguistics and from that grew his interest in psycholinguistics and so in 1967 and 1968 he spent the summers at the University of Minnesota’s Human Learning Institute studying psycholinguistics and behavioral engineering which was a great experience—being a student with no responsibilities other than to learn.
Teaching History and Courses Taught
After receiving his PhD, DeVito returned to his alma mater, Hunter College-in-the-Bronx [which later became Lehman College], to teach. He then moved to Queens College and later to Hunter, from which he retired from full time teaching—all within the City University of New York. DeVito always thought (and still does) that he’d return to teaching as an adjunct but he became so involved with the textbooks, that he's not yet had the time. But, it’s nice to have that option always open.
DeVito's taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, though he concentrated on the undergraduate level and mainly on the introductory courses. Among the courses he's taught on the undergraduate level are: Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, Small Group Communication, Persuasive Speaking, Persuasion and Attitude Change, Communication Theory, Psychology of Communication, Speech for the Classroom Teacher, Nonverbal Communication, Semantics, General Semantics, Statistics, Psycholinguistics. On the graduate level: Psycholinguistics; Language Acquisition; Semantics; Research Methods; Introduction to Graduate Study; Measurement Studies in Communication; The Nature of Speech, Language, and Communication Systems; Theory and Research in Interpersonal Communication.
Editorial Service
At various times, Joseph has served on the editorial boards of Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monographs, Communication Education, Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication, and Etc: A Review of General Semantics. At various times, DeVito has also served as consulting editor to publishers: Random House, Harper & Row, Waveland Press, and HarperCollins. He has also served as ETS coordinator of the committee to construct the Dantes Public Speaking Test for the Educational Testing Service.
