Katie Good receives 2025 Emerging Public Intellectual Award
Katie Good is the recipient of the 2025 Emerging Public Intellectual award.
Katie Good, associate professor of communication at app, is the recipient of the . The award recognizes and fosters emerging talent—those working in the Christian academy who excel in both academic and public spheres and whose work impacts the common good.
“I’m honored and thrilled to receive this award and to represent app, a place with a stellar record of public scholarship with professors’ writing regularly being included in national and international publications,” said Good.
Good is the first app professor to receive the award, which is hosted by Redeemer University and sponsored by Acton Institute, the Center for Public Justice, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the Henry Institute at app, and the Mouw Institute for Faith and Public Life at Fuller Theological Seminary. (Note: app Provost Noah Toly received the honor in 2015 during his tenure at Wheaton College.)
We sat down with Good to learn more about her scholarship, its impact on society, how her work opens doors for students, and why app is the premiere place for her to do this work.
Would you briefly summarize your scholarship?
I study emerging technologies in society, and I’m particularly interested in how people make sense of new tech in their daily lives as well as in learning environments and schools. I look at both the history and contemporary development of educational technologies and also how people use diverse media to participate in global and intercultural communication. I also write about how “slow” and “low-tech” media histories and practices inform our “high-tech” media environment.
Why is your scholarship important for today?
It's important to understand the social impact of technologies. Technologies are not neutral but value-laden and they affect our lives in different ways. Users shape tech and steer its applications in society. So, understanding the intersection between technology and people’s lives is important. Technology holds great promise to help us learn better, to enrich our relationships and connections with each other, to expand our cultural horizons. But tech can also present obstacles to our learning and our relationships. So, understanding those possibilities and challenges is at the heart of what I do.
What drives you to study this topic?
God created us to communicate with others and use our communication as a tool to nurture our relationships and contribute to the flourishing of all of creation and all people. So, focusing on our communication skills and how we direct those skills in a way that supports and serves our neighbors, that cares for creation, I see this as our fundamental task as communicators. Understanding how human communication unfolds in a technologically mediated environment is a complex challenge. It’s an area where there are rich possibilities and daunting challenges. Our task is to help students discern a path for communication in a way that connects their gifts to real needs in the world and contributes to the flourishing of all.
Why is app a great place for professors to participate in scholarship?
app is a really exciting place to do scholarship. So many colleagues are doing exciting projects particularly around technology, communication, visual arts and language, the humanities and sciences, and intercultural learning. There are so many ways to collaborate with others. The focus on student research at app is fantastic. I’ve already had the privilege of serving as a McGregor Research Fellows mentor where I worked with an undergraduate student to complete original research on the role of computers and classrooms and family life. I submitted that collaborative research to a peer-reviewed journal. So, there’s a real opportunity to do cutting edge scholarship with students and with other top-notch profs who are working across a range of disciplines.
How does your scholarship connect to the classroom?
In my classes and discussions with students I find that students at app are interested in digital discernment—thinking intentionally about tech, the devices they are thinking about taking up or perhaps leaving behind, and how that aligns with their values and their calling. So, conversations are active on campus about moral and ethical dilemmas of AI and about whether smartphones are helping people connect more richly or standing in the way of those connections. app is an exciting place to have these active discussions about discerning the kind of approach we want to take with technology.
How do students benefit from being surrounded by public scholars in a Christ-centered, liberal arts environment?
What I notice in a Christian liberal arts environment like app is that faculty are driven to do research that has public impact and that supports the common good. The well-rounded liberal arts education students get in the classroom makes our students so well prepared to lead public discussions about the issues of our time. One of my communication colleagues, who is a filmmaker, says he can train students on how to say something, but the other classes they take give them something to say. And I think that captures the richness of the educational experience at app, where students are connecting issues, ideas, histories, stories, concepts, and tools across their various classes in multiple disciplines and developing well-rounded and creative solutions to contemporary problems or to some of our most pressing issues in society.
