Rate My Professor Jenny Crowley

Jenny L. Crowley is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she also serves as Director for College-Wide Graduate Programs in the College of Communication and Information. She earned her PhD from the University of Iowa. Her primary area of specialization is interpersonal communication, with specific research interests in stigma and supportive communication. Crowley examines how features of communication contribute to perceptions of stigma and how supportive communication facilitates coping with stigma. Complementary research interests include information management and alternative relationships. Currently, she investigates how romantic couples communicatively cope and manage their personal and relational identities when struggling with opioid use disorder. She recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to unite community partners in combating the opioid crisis in rural eastern Tennessee. Her work has been published in leading journals including Communication Research, Communication Theory, and the Journal of Family Communication.

In recognition of her contributions, Crowley received the National Communication Association’s Early Career Award in the Interpersonal Division at the 2024 conference for her innovative research on stigma in interpersonal communication. She also earned the Outstanding Scholar Award from the Southern States Communication Association’s Communication Theory Division. She developed a new framework for researchers studying information sharing on stigmatized topics. Previously serving as Graduate Program Coordinator for the School of Communication Studies, she organized the 2025 National Communication Association Doctoral Honors Seminar at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and secured hosting rights for 2027. Crowley is vice chair-elect of the National Communication Association’s Interpersonal Communication Division, set to become vice chair in November 2025 and chair in fall 2026. Key publications include “Gaps among desired, sought, and received support: Deficits and surpluses in support when coping with taboo marital stressors” (Communication Research, 2018), “A Framework of Relational Information Control: A Review and Extension of Information Control Research in Interpersonal Contexts” (Communication Theory, 2017), “Who’s gonna love a junkie? But he does: Exploring couples’ identity negotiations and dyadic coping in the context of opioid use disorder” (Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2020), and “Self-Disclosure” (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2019).