Gary Edgerton is regularly described as a passionate and caring teacher.  He has enthusiastically shared his love of communication and knowledge of media studies with literally thousands of undergraduate and graduate students over the years.  Altogether he has developed more than 25 different courses, from mass lecture classes to seminars, standard “live” offerings to distance/distributed learning courses.

In turn, three institutions have recognized him for his excellence in teaching.  Gary was first selected the “Outstanding Teacher in Communication” when he was an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University in 1983.  He was next named the “Outstanding Teacher in the Humanities” as an associate professor at Goucher College in 1989, a classic liberal arts institution that values teaching above all else from its faculty members.  Most recently, he was selected to the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society for special distinction in scholarship and teaching as a professor at Old Dominion University in 1996.  Taken together, these institutional recognitions underscore Professor Edgerton's talents as a teacher and enduring commitment as a lifelong mentor and friend to his students.

Gary Edgerton challenges his students early on to begin thinking about their own personal development and where they will fit into the work world after graduation.  During the last decade, for example, he has supervised the department's highly successful internship program, where communication majors and minors assume literally dozens of professional positions for a semester in both the private and public sectors.   As a result, internships have become a signature feature of the Communication and Theatre Arts Department—as they are at Old Dominion University in general because of CAP (the institution's Career Advantage Program)—and many departmental majors and minors have jump-started their careers through work experiences they have gained in “COMM 368: Internship.”