Amazing student Joshua Williams

Double Dawg and triple Franklin degree holder Joshua Williams is finishing up the requirements for a master’s degree in communication studies. He followed two older sisters to the University of Georgia. When it came to pick a major, he was inspired by his sisters and his hardworking single mother to major in women’s studies. Next up, he’ll pursue a Ph.D. to “foster the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars.”

Williams shares some terrific insights about the academic journey:

How did you choose your major?

After getting accepted into UGA, I was absolutely clueless about what I wanted to study. Because of this, I decided to register for courses that either interested me or stuck out to me such as Intro to Philosophy, Multicultural Perspectives in Women’s Studies, and Black Diaspora Literature. What I did not know while taking those three courses is that they would be instrumental in deciding the three majors I would eventually adopt. Philosophy, women’s studies, and comparative literature, like almost any major at UGA, all encouraged me to critically think but I specifically found that these majors proved to me that there is a space for examining social issues in the classroom.

During my sophomore year, I reached out to Kelly Happe to inquire about the B.A. in women’s studies/M.A. in communication studies Double Dawgs program. With her guidance, I discovered so many parallels between the field of rhetoric and discovered that my background perfectly qualified me to go into this field. Before coming into rhetoric, the role of language in media and literature was something I interrogated regularly in my own work. Because of this tendency, I sought out a field that integrated my interdisciplinary background and communication studies overwhelmingly met this need.

Read the entire profile of this talented young scholar bringing the intellectual possibilities of campus experience to their fullest potential.

Image: Joshua Williams (Chad Osburn/UGA)