Fay Boudreaux

Dr. Fay Boudreaux is an Instructor of Communication and the Chair of Southeastern’s annual Vonnie Borden Speech and Theatre Festival. She earned her B.A. in Speech Communication at Southeastern, M.A. in Interpersonal and Organizational Communication from the University of South Alabama, and her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of New Orleans. Among other roles that vary year to year, she is an Honors Faculty member, serves as the faculty advisor for the Southeastern Debate Society, and represents the Department of Communication and Media Studies as their Faculty Senator.

As a native New Orleanian, Dr. Boudreaux has taken on an eclectic range of work outside of academia over the years, including teaching Sunday school, insurance adjusting during natural disasters, DJing karaoke shows and dance parties, and hosting trivia tournaments in the city. Her love for trivia has also led her and her teammates to win Southeastern’s Phi Kappa Phi Homecoming Trivia Tournament multiple times.

Her areas of expertise and research interests include public speaking and reducing performance anxiety, promoting effective teaching practices in the classroom, interpersonal skills and their effects on professional and romantic relationships, personality types and their impacts on leader success, gamification and edutainment applications in the classroom, and the importance of humor in education. She delivers talks and trainings about these topics at many on-campus and off-campus events, including the Mensa Education and Research Foundation annual gathering. As a member of New Orleans Mensa, Dr. Boudreaux strives to connect with the gifted youth in her Honors classes and bridge understandings regarding neurodiversity.

Some of her courses include Honors Public Speaking, Communication for Teachers and Trainers, Interpersonal Communication, Small Group Communication, and Advanced Speaking for the Professional. She leads her classes under the philosophy, “Be the teacher you would want to learn from,” or as she often tells her students, “Be the speaker you would want to listen to.” This “golden rule” helps promote a sense of empathy and community in her classroom, where students enter as strangers, but leave as family.