While not an exhaustive list of all influential figures of rhetorical studies in the modern age, surely this group represents eleven of the most significant teachers and scholars of rhetoric in the last hundred years. These individuals shaped our understanding of rhetoric through their own scholarship as well as through the development of generations of their students who carried these ideas forward through various stages of development and permutation. In addition to scholarship, these eleven also greatly influenced the role of contemporary departments and schools of communication, institutionalizing the study of our discipline in colleges and universities. Above all, they were master teachers, both at the graduate and the undergraduate levels.