Marnel Niles Goins is the Dean in the College of Sciences and Humanities at Marymount University in Arlington, VA. Prior to this appointment, she was Professor of Communication at California State University, Fresno for 12 years. She is a native of Philadelphia, PA. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication and Culture at Howard University in Washington, DC and her BA from the Department of Communication at Oakwood College in Huntsville, AL. She taught courses in Small Group Communication and Organizational Communication and has a special interest in gender and racial dynamics in organizational settings.

At Marymount, a number of new academic programs have been developed under Marnel’s leadership, including a graduate certificate program for Ethics and Leadership in Criminal Justice, which launched in the Fall 2021 semester, and a B.S. in Engineering. Also new is the 4+1 M.A. in English program, which enables students to earn a B.A. in Literature & Languages or Digital Writing & Narrative Design and a M.A. in English & Humanities over five years of study at Marymount. This program facilitates a student’s transition from a broad-based liberal arts B.A. into a flexible, customizable and interdisciplinary M.A. program that concludes with a thesis or an advanced internship practicum that addresses the student’s professional goals.

Marnel has several books, book chapters, and articles published in the Communication discipline She is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Communication and Still Searching for Our Mothers’ Gardens: Experiences of New Tenure-Track Women of Color in ‘Majority’ Institutions. She has articles published in Communication Studies, Women & Language, and The Alliance of Black School Educators, in addition to book chapters published in Let’s Communicate and the Routledge Handbook of Applied Communication Research. She has presented papers and panels at a number of conferences, including the National Communication Association convention, Western States Communication Association convention, and Eastern Communication Association convention.

Marnel is President of the Western States Communication Association. She is the former President of the Organization for Research on Women and Communication, a former member of the National Communication Association’s Executive Committee,  past Chair of the National Communication Association’s Black Caucus, and former Secretary of the National Communication Association’s Group Communication Division.