Dr. Helen H. Naugle.

Located in Clough 447, the Naugle CommLab provides a free, confidential, and non-compulsory consultation service for communication-related projects. Our clients primarily consist of undergraduate and graduate students, but we also occasionally work with staff and faculty members at Georgia Tech. Our focus: supplying clients with fresh perspectives, technological resources, and strategies that can facilitate growth and learning as clients work on developing their multimodal communication skills and projects. Projects may include traditional and innovative essays, magazine articles, poetry, oral presentations, poster design, technical reports, videos, medical school applications, cover letters, and resumes/CVs.

The CommLab exists within the Georgia Tech Communication Center, which celebrated its grand opening on September 28, 2011. The space includes a central consultation area and four rehearsal rooms. Six years later, on August 11, 2017, the consultation area was rededicated and renamed the Helen H. Naugle CommLab. Dr. Helen Naugle, a former Georgia Tech professor and pioneering scholar in writing center studies, passed away in 2009.

Clients can receive assistance in half-hour one-on-one consultations with undergraduate peer consultants or postdoctoral professional consultants; the CommLab also offers workshops on a range of tightly focused communication topics, such as grant proposals, research abstracts, poster design, literature reviews, and presenting research to non-experts.

The Naugle CommLab is not a remedial resource that exists simply to help lower-performing students. As Dr. Karen Head puts it, “Foremost, we want to disabuse students of the idea that our center is a last resort for the struggling. We want them to understand that this is a place where exciting things happen, where even our best students come to hone their projects” (qtd. in “A Lost Legacy”). The CommLab’s goal is to provide a safe space in which clients learn that it is not only helpful but wise to seek collaborators in the composing process. Our hope is that the attitudes and strategies they develop as a result of working with CommLab consultants will remain with them and transfer to the personal and professional situations they will find themselves in following graduation.

Works Cited

“Helen Naugle.” Image taken from Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, vol. 93, no. 3, Oct. 3, 2017, p. 21. https://issuu.com/gtalumni/docs/vol93_no3_low_res/21. Accessed 18 February 2020.

“A Lost Legacy Rediscovered: Newly Named Naugle Communication Lab Fulfills Vision of One of Tech’s First Women Faculty.” Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Georgia Institute of Technology, 16 April 2017. https://www.iac.gatech.edu/news-events/stories/2017/8/lost-legacy-rediscovered-newly-named-naugle-communication-lab-fulfills-vision/594505. Accessed 20 February 2020.