Dr. Shirley Drew is a professor of communication and director of graduate studies at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. She has been teaching and living in the Sunflower State since 1989. She completed her Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University in 1985. Before moving to Kansas, she worked for three years as an internal management trainer and consultant for a 650-bed hospital in Toledo, Ohio. Her teaching areas include interpersonal, group and organizational communication and qualitative research methods. Her research is primarily qualitative (ethnographic) and includes ritual, group culture, and occupational culture. Her book entitled Dirty Work: The Social Construction of Taint (with Melanie Mills and Bob Gassaway) will be out in August 2007. She is currently working on a second volume of Dirty Work with Melanie Mills. She is also involved in a project about cultural celebrations that she hopes will eventually be a book.

When not teaching or writing, Shirley enjoys hiking, reading Sci-Fi and mystery, and watching films. She also likes camping, fishing and hanging out with her field biologist husband who’s glad he found an “outdoor girl.”