Dr. Besel is a professor of communication studies and director of the School of Communications at Grand Valley State University. He was a past chair of the Communication Studies Department at California Polytechnic State University. He also served as director of the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program and director of the Interdisciplinary Studies in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) program. He is co-editor, with Dr. Jnan Blau, of Performance on Behalf of the Environment, published in 2014 by Lexington Books. A second book, co-edited with Dr. Bernard K. Duffy, titled Green Voices: Defending Nature and the Environment in American Civic Discourse, was published in 2016 by SUNY Press. He is a past president of the National Communication Association’s Environmental Communication Division and a past chair of the Environmental Communication Interest Group of the Western States Communication Association.