Kendal Lyssy is a  doctoral candidate studying interpersonal and family communication at the University of Missouri. Her research program centers the experiences of diverse families. She studies how adults recall narratives about adoption and religion and how they make sense of their experiences. She is interested in the impact of messaging around adoption and religion on adoptees’ sense-making. In her dissertation, she explores how adoptees manage privacy around adoption and religion in their adoptive families and how adoptees talk about adoption and religion. Her work was supported by the Sandra Petronio Communication Privacy Management fellowship through Indiana University Indianapolis for the 2025-2026 academic year. 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, Southern Communication Journal, 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, including Communication Theory, Health Communication, Argumentation and Debate, and Interpersonal Communication. She is a passionate teacher 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 Relational Communication at Mizzou and also taught Family Communication in the spring 2025 semester. She is certified to teach online and earned a digital credential through Mizzou’s Teaching for Learning Center. Kendal also serves as the Graduate Professional Assistant for Teaching and Learning. In this role, she is responsible for reworking course descriptions on the MU Course Catalog and contributing her knowledge about accessibility to the Comm Lab.

Beyond research and teaching, Kendal is passionate about service. She works closely with the IT Accessibility Office to advocate for 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.