Don Wood

Biography

A native of Washington, DC, I serve, joyfully, as Director of the Professional Development Center (PDC) in the School of Business and Economics. PDC helps students prepare for the job market. On the academic side, I teach Business Communication and Introduction to Business. If you explore my blog, The Right Lane, you will see more detail about my life and my personal philosophy. Communication, higher education and change have become my life work.

My professional engagement with communication, higher education and change began in 1977 at WGTS FM, a mid-market, classical music radio station at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland. In 1982, my wife Lynette and I established a graphic design and consulting company called Ultimate Service that later expanded to provide offset printing and bindery services and was renamed The Ink Spot. In 1986, I accepted a position as director of publications for Oakwood College (now university) in Huntsville, Alabama. A year later, I was promoted to manager of Oakwood Graphixx until 1995 when we decided to pursue graduate degrees at the Indiana University. While attending IU, writing, reporting and editing, computerized publication design, and broadcast news formed my teaching territory. My instructional method garnered me an excellence in teaching award. The recipient of the prestigious Knight Foundation Fellowship, I earned a master’s degree from Indiana.

Relocating to Washington, D.C. in 2000, my teaching continued in media writing, publication design and broadcast news writing for two years at Howard University. Motivated by a strong desire to share the techniques of effective oral, visual and electronic communication in the private sector, Wood Communication was born. In addition to Wood Communications, I taught writing and communication courses at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia (2004 to 2007 and 2009-2010). However, in the summer of 2007, the call of change came with an offer to serve as Communication Director for the Potomac Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which serves over 160 churches with a combined membership of over 30,000 in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Then in 2010, the call to change surfaced again leading to my position at Winston-Salem State University. The proud father of two adult children (Donald Jr. and Summer), I have been married to Dr. Lynette Wood (Associate Professor in the Department of Accounting & MIS) for 34 adventure-filled years.