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Steven McCornack grew up in Seattle, Washington, in the years before Microsoft and Amazon. For as long as he can remember, he has been fascinated with how people create, maintain, and disband close relationships, especially the challenges confronting romantic couples. As an undergraduate at the University of Washington, he pursued this passion by studying with Malcolm “Mac” Parks, who inspired Steve to devote his life to interpersonal communication, teaching, and research.

Steve moved to the Midwest in 1984, pursuing his graduate studies under the tutelage of Barbara O’Keefe at the University of Illinois, where he received his master’s degree and his PhD. After twenty-seven years at Michigan State University, Steve moved to the South, where he is now a Full Professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Steve has published more than 30 articles in leading communication journals and has received several prestigious awards and fellowships related to undergraduate teaching, including the Lilly Endowment Teaching Fellowship, the Amoco Foundation Excellence-in-Teaching Award, the MSU All-University Teacher/Scholar Award, and the MSU Alumni Association Undergraduate Teaching Award. Steve was the 2013 recipient of the National Communication Association’s Donald H. Ecroyd Award for Outstanding Teaching in Higher Education.

To Steve, authoring Reflect & Relate represents the culmination of 30 years of devout interest in how best to share knowledge of interpersonal communication theory and research with undergraduate students. His courses are some of the most popular on campus. Other than his love of teaching, Steve’s principal passions are his family (wife Kelly and three redheaded sons, Kyle, Colin, and Conor), playing and listening to music, yoga, Kona coffee, his Subaru WRX, and meditation.

For Kelly, Kyle, Colin, and Conor:

“You know how everyone’s always saying, ‘seize the moment’? I don’t know, I’m kinda thinkin’ it’s the other way around—you know, like, the moment seizes us.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s constant—the moments. It’s just, it’s like, it’s always ‘right now,’ you know?”

—Boyhood (2014)