Robert Wade Kenny (Professor) BA, B.Ed., MA (Saint Mary’s), MA, PhD (University of Pittsburgh)
A message from Tracy Moniz, on behalf of the Department of Communication Studies
We share with you the sad news that our colleague, Dr. Robert Wade Kenny, passed away on June 4, 2024. Wade joined MSVU in 2004. His passing comes just shy of his retirement after 20 years with the Mount community.
Wade was thoughtful and generous, quirky and kind, creative and innovative, charismatic and intriguing, pensive and passionate.
To his colleagues, Wade was a mentor. He was generous with his time, insights and encouragement. Many of us, particularly as early career faculty, fondly recall profound and thought-provoking conversations with Wade, often by happenstance, in the evenings, by the photocopier in the Seton Annex. He expressed confidence in us and in our achievements, and he had a way of ‘building us up’ in our academic mindset and showing us that we ‘belonged.’
Wade was ever committed to student success and wellbeing. In his teaching, he aspired to create an environment where students could analyze and find new ways of looking at their own lives. In 2012, he received the Mount Saint Vincent Alumnae Award for Teaching Excellence. In response, he said: “My students represent my hope. When they leave my classroom, a part of me leaves with them as they live their lives, which, in a way, gives me the chance for redemption. My hope is that they use what they learned to live good, virtuous lives.”
Wade was deeply interested in the human condition and passionate about culture in all its forms. His office on campus reflected his desire to embrace and understand culture as essential to human communication. His space was filled with a cross-section of artifacts—from quirky pieces of art to yard sale finds.
Wade was a rhetorician who contemplated issues of agency and ethics in moral life. Drawn to philosophy and sociological theory, he gravitated to the works of Burke, Heidegger, Frye and Kant. Not surprisingly then, while Wade taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses across our programs, his passion was teaching communication ethics. He chaired our department’s Research Ethics Board for many years. He was meticulous and thorough in his approach and devoted much thought and care to the issues and projects presented in the many applications he reviewed for class-based research projects and student work.
Wade published both scholarly and non-scholarly material, including an acclaimed fiction novel, The Attic, in 1985 while he taught high school English. Most recently, he was studying the work of Spanish writer and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, focusing on the lessons offered by Unamuno in his last famous address given at the University of Salamanca in 1934, illustrating communication as a dialectical engagement with becoming.
Outside the classroom, Wade enjoyed writing, travelling (with a fondness for Spain), swimming and playing instruments including guitar, piano and fiddle. Wade was a night owl, and his music could be heard through the halls in the evenings as he played his keyboard.
Wade’s family has requested that donations in his memory be made to the MSVU Public Relations Enhancement Fund: https://alumni.msvu.ca/robertwadekenny.