Master’s Student Traci Lively’s Delayed Return to UT Turns into Pursuit of a PhD

Traci Lively entered the master’s program at the College of Communication and Information in 2004 but put it on hold when she was also accepted into the film studies program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Fast forward several years and Lively is back in the CCI program, with a concentration in communication studies, and she’s flourishing.

“Life happened and I decided I hated my job and I just wanted to go back and finish what I started,” she said.

As any master’s student heading into a PhD program does, Lively has thrown herself into conducting research. She recently presented her current findings on the phenomenon of ghosting to an audience at the Southern States Communication Association. She and fellow master’s student, Nick Ganus, have dipped their toes into this area of research by studying what already exists in the literature and looking for opportunities to build on existing work. In particular, she said they want to delve deeper into studying a specific form of ghosting called “orbiting,” which is only referenced twice in current research.

Traci Lively sits behind a table with chairs and people in front of her at the SSCA conference.
Traci Lively presents her and Nick Ganus’ research on ghosting at the Southern States Communication Association Conference.

“Ghosting is when you disappear and there’s no communication. Orbiting is when you stop the communication, but you follow each other on different social media platforms,” she explained. “They’re keeping their foot in the door.” 

While this research is in its infancy, Lively said she and Ganus are going to continue working out their research plan and will hopefully publish a paper on the topic of orbiting. 

“We’re utterly obsessed with orbiting and creating its own genre and study, really developing and doing research on it. Research always looks at it from the victim’s side, other than the reason why people ghost in the first place,” she said. “I want to develop the communication theories as to why they actually do it in the first place, but also develop the reasons for orbiting.”

She said her first time presenting research at a conference was great, though a bit intimidating as the leading researcher on ghosting, Leah LeFebvre, was in the audience. Lively jokes that there’s a good bit of irony in that she teaches public speaking but doesn’t like doing it much herself.

As for teaching, Lively said she has enjoyed molding the public speaking course she teaches into something that is, well, lively. 

“I love teaching and creating an environment that has a lot of energy and excitement,” she said, noting she created groups in her class so they can constructively critique and support each other, and it’s yielded positive results. “The amount of excitement and encouragement they have for each other—they literally cheer when someone gets up to do a speech and finishes. I think making them a unit helps them with their energy in class.”

Teaching was her initial plan way back when she first started her master’s, though these days Lively also has other aspirations for her postdoctoral career. She said her research and career interests are scattered in various directions, but she’s been allowed the flexibility to combine all her interests together.

Besides being a graduate teaching assistant and earning her master’s, Lively also works part-time as a musical theatre choreographer for Knox County Schools. Performance art is one of her first loves and she’s managed to work that into her master’s thesis, which focuses on leadership and culture change as she followed a top ballet company after they got a new director.

“I’m trying to fuse what I do in dance in the public school systems with my love for communications and studying and adapting it and making my own thing,” she said. “Other than teaching, my ultimate goal is to have some kind of administrative position, like where I’m a director of performing arts, that’s a big dream. I want to be the amalgam where I know how to do everything on both sides.”

It’s taken some time and several twists of fate for her to get to where she is, but Lively said she couldn’t be happier. Just applying to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the first place was a leap for the Knoxville native.

“I actually fought going to UT for a really long time because my mom worked for the university for 32 years and she’s a graduate. But having this big midlife crisis epiphany happened, I sold my home and started taking care of my mom,” she said, noting that’s also when she decided to go back to school and finish the master’s she started so many years earlier.

Lively’s film dreams had been cut short after she finished the program at UCLA in 2008 and her dad fell ill. She moved back home to Knoxville to help take care of him and secured a job in retail that ultimately tied her down due to it paying so well. But that “big midlife crisis epiphany” made her realize the money was no longer worth it, and she was ready to pursue her real dreams. 

Though she isn’t sure how she manages to be a full-time caregiver for her mother, a student, a GTA, and a musical choreographer, Lively said the support at the College of Communication and Information has been invaluable. She knows that at any time she can walk down the hallway and knock on the door of any School of Communication Studies faculty and get assistance.

“There’s not anybody on the floor who hasn’t helped me in some shape or form. I have people in my corner at all times,” she said, though she noted her advisor, Associate Professor Michelle Violanti, has been integral in shaping her research, and Associate Professor Jenny Crowley helped Lively submit her research to the SSCA conference.

It was this unilateral support that cinched Lively’s decision to stay on at UT for her doctorate. Though she looked at communication studies PhD programs around the country, she kept coming back to her experience at CCI.

“The fact that I have roots in this system with UT and I can identify with pretty much anybody on faculty here and I’ve built trust and rapport—to be able to build on that for another four years and at any time they can step up to the plate and defend something for me, I love that,” she said.