Kendal Lyssy is a fourth-year  doctoral candidate studying interpersonal and family communication at the University of Missouri. Her research program explores diverse families through the use of narratives. She studies how adults recall narratives about adoption and religion and how they make sense of those narratives, among other topics. She is interested in the impact of messaging around adoption and religion on adoptees’ sense-making. In her dissertation, she is exploring how adoptees manage privacy around adoption and religion in their adoptive families and how adoptees talk about adoption and religion. Her work is being supported by the Indiana University Indianapolis Petronio Communication Privacy Management fellowship. Kendal also makes methodological and theoretical contributions to communication and disability by interrogating how disability is communicatively constructed in disability-focused spaces. Her work can be found in peer-reviewed journals such as Qualitative Inquiry and Journal of Social & Personal Relationships.

Kendal received her BA and MA from the university of North Texas. At UNT, she fell in love with teaching as a Teaching Assistant through teaching courses like Communication Theory, Health Communication, Argumentation and Debate, and Interpersonal Communication. She is a passionate teacher-scholar aiming to better the lives of her students through the idea that each student brings something valuable to her classroom. She uses holistic teaching methods and challenges her students to be their best selves. Her classroom functions as a seminar designed to help students reach their academic goals through active learning activities and hands-on assignments. Currently, Kendal is teaching Public Speaking at Mizzou and also taught Family Communication in the spring 2025 semester. She is certified to teach online and is earning a digital credential through Mizzou’s Teaching for Learning Center.

Beyond research and teaching, Kendal is passionate about service. She works closely with the IT Accessibility Office to prioritize digital accessibility at Mizzou. Kendal served as a paper reader for the Family Communication Division at NCA and also serves as a reviewer for the Basic Course and G.I.F.T. divisions at CSCA. She has presented numerous presentations at NCA and CSCA and is an active member of both organizations. Outside of academia, Kendal can be found hanging out with friends, reading fiction, nonfiction, and mysteries, trying new restaurants and coffee shops, cooking, listening to any and all kinds of music, and reading up on the latest pop culture and celebrity news.