Dr. Melissa Wanzer will be the first to admit she can’t tell a joke, but she does know that laughter is the best medicine when it comes to communicating and coping.

And the associate professor in the Communications Department at Canisus College in Buffalo , N.Y. , has given it some serious study over the years.

She’ll talk about it Monday, March 27, at West Virginia University when she delivers the annual Helen Coast Hayes Lecture at 4 p.m. in the Gluck Theatre . The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

A Summary of Ten Years of Humor Research: The Benefits of Humor Production,is the title of her talk, and the springboard to that study couldn’t have been more sad.

For Wanzer, who earned her doctorate in communication studies at WVU , the phrase,You have to laugh to keep from crying,took on a poignant punchline when her father received a dreaded diagnosis at the age of 42.

Michael Bekelja had a loving wife, five children and a terminal brain tumor. How did he handle his illness? With humor.

He rattled off one-liners in waiting rooms. He cracked jokes during chemotherapy. When his hair started falling out during treatments, he would gather it up and mail a clump or two to his daughter who was grimly soldiering through her senior year at West Chester University.

As her dad dug in with slapstick to wage the fight of his life, she had to laugh as she tore open each envelope with follicle greetings from her father.

If you couldn’t find humor in that situation or have the ability to make a joke, you could not get through it,Wanzer said, recalling those days.

Bekelja lived 18 months, which was far longer than the six weeks doctors originally gave him following his diagnosis. And that started Wanzer thinking about the human spirit and its capacity to cope.

Which, in turn, started her thinking about the humor that doctors and emergency medical personnel often employ to get through their sometimes harrowing days.

And, she finally fixed on the notion of how just having a sense of humor can help in day-to-day communication in generalbe it in the office, living room or classroom.

Regardless of the context, humor seems to be beneficial and productive,she said.It helps get the point across in almost any situation.

In her research today she employs a character-trait scale that was devised by her WVU communication professors, Dr. Steven Booth-Butterfield and Dr. Melanie Booth-Butterfield. Their 17-point assessment Humor Orientation, orHO,asks you to agree or disagree with statements like,I can be funny without having to rehearse a joke,orI don’t tell jokes or stories even when asked to.

Laughs or no laughs, lots of people have taken it over the years to varying results, Wanzer said. But so far there have been no serious contenders to the man who inspired her own research.

I believe my research is the highest compliment to the highestHO’,she said.My father.

Dr. Wanzer is an excellent presenter and we are honored to have someone with her

research background to come visit WVU and talk to our students and faculty,said Dr. Matthew M. Martin, chair of WVU ’s Department of Communication Studies.

The Helen Coast Hayes Lecture Series was established in 1998 by an endowment that provides permanent support for annual lectures on peace studies. The series explores a variety

of topics in the humanities that affect peace, including the literature, history, sociology, psychology and philosophy of peace.

For more information on the lecture or the department, contact 304-293-3905.