Lorelle Jabs
Associate Professor of Communication
Email: ljabs@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2128
Office: Marston 212
Education: BS, Oregon State University, 1986; MS, Oregon State University, 1988; PhD, University of Washington, 1997. At SPU since 2000.
Lorelle Jabs regularly teaches “Organizational Communication,” “Cultural Communication,” “Conflict Management,” and “Public Speaking.” Dr. Jabs has a broad educational background, earning an undergraduate degree in Statistics, Chemistry, and Math; and a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering before pursuing her doctorate in Speech Communication. She worked as an engineer for several years first at 3M in White City, Oregon, and later at Aim Aviation in Renton, Washington, prior to becoming a college professor at Seattle Pacific.
Dr. Jabs earned her doctorate at the University of Washington, where she combined her engineering experience with the ethnography of communication to investigate the retrospective discourse surrounding the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger. She has had the opportunity to travel extensively to more than 40 different countries and has pursued research on conflict management in East Africa as well as the United States. Her research interests include interpersonal conflict management, conflict response styles, intractable conflict, and Karamoja, Uganda.
Selected Publications
- Jabs, L.B. (2010). “‘You Can’t Kill a Louse With One Finger’: A Case Study of Interpersonal Conflict in Karamoja, Uganda.” Peace and Change, 35(3), 483–501.
- Edwards, M.E. & Jabs, L.B. (2009). “When Safety Culture Backfires: Unintended Consequences of Half-Shared Governance in a High Tech Workplace.” The Social Science Journal, 46(4), 707–23.
- Jabs, L.B. (2007). Where two elephants meet, the grass suffers: A case study of intractable conflict in Karamoja, Uganda. American Behavioral Scientist, 50(11), 1498–519.
- Jabs, L.B. (2005). “Collectivism and conflict: Conflict response styles in Karamoja, Uganda.” International Journal of Conflict Management, 16(4), 354–78.
- Jabs, L.B. (2005). “Communicative Rules and Organizational Decision Making.” Journal of Business Communication, 42(3), 265–88.
For additional publications, please see Dr. Jabs' CV (PDF).