Dr. Roberta K. Ray of Montana Tech’s Liberal Studies Department has had a peer reviewed paper accepted for presentation at the 39th Annual Convention of the International Listening Association to be held this summer in Dublin, Ireland. The title of Dr. Ray’s article is: “The High Cost of Empathic Listening.”
In the paper, Dr. Ray argues that while we all need to practice empathic listening, i.e. emotionally identifying with and expressing compassion toward another, we also need to be careful to recognize that there can be a high personal cost to caring and to take steps to preserve our emotional wellbeing.
Dr. Ray teaches classes at Montana Tech in communications and is the author of the textbook The Power of Listening. She is also the author of Angels on a School Bus, which is the story of the Camp Husky dog rescue in Butte. She holds a PhD in speech communication from the University of Southern California.