Bio

Karen Tracy is a professor emeritus in CU's Department of Communication.  She grew up in the Philadelphia area and, now, following her retirement is back living in the city. She attended Penn State for her undergraduate degree where she studied speech pathology.  After a year as a therapist in an Ohio public school, she took her MA in speech and language pathology at Bowling Green State University, following which she worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1977 Karen began a PhD at the University of Wisconsin where she turned her attention to the communication problems of ordinary people in institutional and intimate life. She graduated from Wisconsin with a PhD in Communication Arts in 1981 and joined the Temple University faculty where she taught for nine years. In 1990 she took a position at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she taught and did research until 2020.

Karen's research has been animated by the belief that the communication activities that make up people's lives often present them with difficult choices and dilemmas. Understanding the character of theses troubles--how they are displayed and managed in talk and writing, including what are better or worse ways of acting--has been a lifelong focus. Over her career she has studied a variety of communication practices including 9-1-1 emergency calls, the giving of criticism, faculty-grad student presentation and question sessions, school board meetings, small claims court, legislative hearings and state supreme courts' oral arguments about same-sex marriage, and, most recently, federal civil trials about civil rights issues. Details of her publications and awards are in her CV. 

In addition to continuing to do research and write, Karen spends lots of time enjoying Philly with her husband Bob, their dog Duo, and the many family members who live in the area.