In college, only one class she took was taught by a female professor.
After college, she was called a girl, even though she was a professional woman.
Today, Dr. Jacqueline Lambiase serves as the department head for strategic communication at TCU. Her department includes more than 10 women, eight of them tenured or on a tenure track.
Throughout her career, Lambiase has seen inequalities and tried to correct them.
Notably, Lambiase was a leading faculty member in the TCU Portrait Project. This is part of a national initiative, the Harvard Foundation Portraiture Project, created to recognize the people who served at Harvard University for at least 25 years and have made significant contributions to the university. Specifically, the project commissions portraits of people of African American, Asian American, Latino American and Native American backgrounds.
“I think it is so valuable for everyone in our community to be able to ‘see someone that could be them’ as they walk around campus viewing the various pieces of art,” Chancellor Victor Boschini wrote in an email to TCU 360.
In this project, Lambiase’s diversity course did a campus-wide audit of all portraits in spring 2018, finding that of about 30 formal portraits, all of them were white people, and most were white men.
Following that, Lambiase began working with faculty and staff to acquire more portraits of people of color and women who have made significant contributions to the university. One example of this is the portrait of Allene Jones, one of the first Black students at TCU and TCU’s first Black faculty member, done by Melissa Perkins, an alum of the strategic communication department.
In addition to taking part in projects that will last beyond her time at TCU, Lambiase has affected countless members of the TCU community who are here today.
“She’s humorous. She’s humble. She’s hilarious,” said Dr. Ashley English, an assistant professor of strategic communication at TCU. “And she brings all of that into the classroom.”
English first met Lambiase at the University of North Texas, where Lambiase was the faculty adviser for the National Association of Black Journalists chapter. Later, though, English was one of Lambiase’s students.
Now heading the strategic communication department -- for the second time -- Lambiase spends much of her time working on administrative tasks: hiring and training faculty, meeting with other instructors and students, assessing the program and specific courses within the department.
But even with this schedule, Lambiase makes time to teach a diversity course and a senior seminar.
“Just students. Working with students. That’s why I’m here,” Lambiase said.
Certainly Lambiase has taken the practices and commitment to creating an inclusive environment English witnessed at UNT to TCU, where Lambiase has been since 2009 and where the next generation of students have seen for themselves her dedication to the program.
Madeline Pitcock, who graduated May 2020 with a degree in strategic communication, took several of Lambiase’s classes during her time at TCU.
Pitcock respected Lambiase for the honest career advice she gave and applauded her skills as a discussion facilitator. And like English, Pitcock noted how Lambiase incorporates reality into the classroom.
She also recognized Lambiase’s impact on the strategic communication department, turning it into a “dynamic” program and encouraging students to find new ways to think, which is what Lambiase said she wants her students to learn from her courses.
But even before Lambiase came to TCU, she was already aiming to create change.
Working in an industry supposed to promote tolerance, she was exposed to inappropriate, sexist comments.
Women in the 1960s and 1970s opened up doors for her, but even as she entered the workforce as a journalist and public relations official, barriers remained.
Difficulties she faced prompted her to pursue advanced degrees and research focused on gender, sex and race in advertising, and in general, to try to create a more equitable place for everyone.
Lambiase has spent decades working to make the world more inclusive, more equitable and more diverse.
She always knew she wanted to be a writer, leading her to pursue journalism as an undergraduate student at the University of North Texas.
After college, she worked at local news publications and held many positions -- business reporter, wire editor, copy editor, page one editor.
She had two female and two male bosses, but the professional newsrooms, Lambiase said, seemed to be less diverse than that of her college newspaper, where she was the editor.
Eventually she left her hometown of Dallas to go to Maryland. She was searching for jobs in journalism, but many companies had hiring freezes in place amid a poor economy, and the openings she could find in that field didn’t pay well. So she interviewed to be a public information officer at an electric utility company that served residents of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, one of the largest employers in the area.
With no other obvious career prospects, Lambiase took the job.
“Just for my sanity I needed to go to work,” she said.
This job showed Lambiase, who had a background in journalism, what public relations was and what public relations could be. She learned how to talk to the press. She learned how to engage with the community.
Three years later, in 1990, Lambiase found herself back in Texas, pursuing a master’s in journalism at UNT, where tuition fees were more affordable than schools in Maryland. Then she decided to work toward a Ph.D., this time in humanities.
All at once, Lambiase was pursuing a doctoral degree, teaching journalism and public relations courses and raising children.
Lambiase saw the barriers to women and people of color in the workplace. She recognized the improvements that had been made but saw where there was still a need for more.
“Learning how to navigate those and think about those and fix them, you know, that was really I think why I went back to grad school,” Lambiase said.
She said as an instructor, she wanted to show women in an industry-linked program how to balance working and raising a family and to poke holes at popular media depictions that supported the idea that it’s easy for women to “have it all.”
One way she did this was through humor. She used to pull diapers and crayons out of the briefcase she brought to class. This was a joke, but the objects she removed from her bag weren’t props -- they were there for a reason.
“Not that it wasn’t hard and terrible sometimes, but it was also sweet and wonderful and messy,” she said.
She stayed at UNT for 13 years as a professor, and while she was there, she taught Dr. Ashley English, now an assistant professor of strategic communication at TCU.
But English didn’t meet Lambiase for the first time in class. Rather, they met through the National Association of Black Journalists chapter at UNT, where Lambiase was serving as the faculty adviser and English was a member.
“It just always felt like she understood at a much deeper level,” English said.
Lambiase wasn’t, as English said, a “passive observer” when it came to issues of equity and inclusion, unlike other professors she had at UNT.
“In Jacque’s classes, she corrected misunderstandings,” English said. “Quickly. And aggressively. And it made you feel safe.”
As her student, English said Lambiase’s intelligence and knowledge stood out as impressive, but at the same time, she made the classroom environment feel informal and didn’t emphasize her credentials.
English said her own teaching practices have been influenced by those of Lambiase, who made it a point to incorporate learning material into real situations, showing students how to translate lessons from the classroom into their lives.
And Lambiase has affected English’s career in other ways.
After English earned her master’s degree, she began working for a nonprofit. When she realized nonprofit communicators lacked the resources public relations officers in other companies or organizations have, she asked Lambiase to collaborate with her on creating a conference for people who work at nonprofits. In 2009, what is now known as the TCU Nonprofit Communicators Conference was born.
The next time Lambiase and English worked together on a project, it was Lambiase who first reached out, asking English to teach at TCU’s Certified Public Communicator program in 2011.
Plus, English said Lambiase has authored almost every recommendation letter she’s needed in the past 17 years.
“We just have this relationship that just keeps on giving,” English said.
Looking to the future
Lambiase is a department chair at TCU. She’s been recognized for her decades of experience, knowledge and contributions to her field. The impact she’s made on the strategic communication program will last even after she leaves TCU.
But Lambiase doesn’t consider her academic credentials or career achievements to be marks of her success.
“So to me success I guess would look like collaboration, and getting other people involved, and getting other people to think with me and help me,” she said.
After sharing details of her life, her goals, the challenges she’s faced and the strategies she’s used to overcome them, Lambiase commented on the future of her career.
“I’m on a downward slope,” Lambiase said.
Do not be mistaken; this “downward slope” has only narrowed Lambiase’s focus on the work she still wants to accomplish. With what’s left, she plans to continue her research on the public sector, while also pursuing the research she’s been doing for years, which relates to sex, gender and race in advertising.
“I have a place from which I can take up for people and speak for people who need me to do that, and I’m gonna use it,” she said.
It goes back to the early decades of her life and her career, when Lambiase saw firsthand the barriers certain groups face in society.
After arming herself with knowledge and experience, Lambiase is in a position to fight for equity and inclusion.
And after years of proving her commitment to do what she can to help others, Lambiase doesn’t plan on stopping.