About the Director
Dr. Derrick R. Rosenior is the Director of the Institute and is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in the Communication Department at Vanguard University. Dr. Rosenior who began teaching at Vanguard University in 2005, was born into a Methodist family and became a Pentecostal at a young age after experiencing a spiritual revival that culminated in his being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Both he and his family were transformed and impacted by the message and experience of Pentecost. Since that early encounter with Holy Spirit, he has developed a passion for studying, researching, writing and speaking about Pentecostalism and sharing the full gospel message about the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
Dr. Rosenior earned a B.A. degree in Speech Communication from Fairmont State College (now University) in Fairmont, WV and a M.A. in Interpersonal and Public Communication from Central Michigan University. He earned a Ph.D. degree from Howard University in Washington, DC in Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication. His dissertation entitled "Toward Racial Reconciliation: Collective Memory, Myth and Nostalgia in American Pentecostalism" was a rhetorical analysis of the racial reconciliation movement that took place in American Pentecostalism in the mid 1990s.
Dr. Rosenior teaches a variety of courses in the Communication Department here at Vanguard University including such classes as Rhetoric of Pentecostalism, Intercultural Communication, Interracial Communication, Nonverbal Communication and Communication Theory. He is a member of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and currently serves as the Chair of the Religion and Culture Interest Group for that organization. For the past ten years he has been a member of the National Communication Association, and is also a member of the Religious Communication Association where he served as the Chair of its Mediated Division.