Dr. Jon Hess's scholarship centers on communication of relational messages. His interest in how people can best maintain personal relationships has led him to study how people deal with challenges in relationships - such as getting along with people we dislike--and how people manage closeness and distance in intimate relationships. He has also been interested in how relational connections between teachers and students affect classroom outcomes. This research has focused on how teacher immediacy and messages that support students’ face needs impacts student learning and other classroom outcomes. His research has been published in Human Communication Research, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and many others.

Jon is currently editor of the discipline’s leading journal for research on communication and learning, Communication Education. His research has been recognized with the International Network on Personal Relationships dissertation award for best dissertation in 1996-1997 and with five top-four awards for papers he has presented at regional and national conferences. He has done numerous newspaper, radio, and TV interviews about his research in outlets such as the BBC, Boston Globe, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, and more. At the University of Missouri, where he served from 1997-2008, he was recognized as the inaugural recipient of the iCOM Outstanding Professor Award (iCOM is the MU Department of Communication’s undergraduate student organization).