On
Track to Sacramento
Dennis C. Alexander,
WSCA President
For
those of you who know about the Train Museum in Sacramento, I hope you
appreciate my minimalist effort at a pun for the headline.
I am looking forward to the Sacramento convention for many reasons.
Dawn Braithwaite has put together a dynamite program.
The keynote, town hall debate, pre-conference, and return of the
convention brunch are a few of the things I think will be special. John Williams and the local host group have also put together
a fine hosting effort. Many of you
will avail yourselves of the microbrewery experience, some of us will play golf,
and scads of us will dance to Robin’s great deejay efforts.
I can also think of a few receptions to attend and the business meetings
(let’s hear it for only one early morning of business meetings).
I encourage you to attend the luncheon.
It is an important occasion for awards and recognizing the contributions
of individuals within WSCA. I
promise to keep the Presidential Address short and to the point.
In
Chicago, the Executive Council met the evening before NCA began.
The world is coming to Salt Lake City for the Winter Olympics in 2002.
So the EC decided we should hold a better event by having WSCA come to
Salt Lake City for 2003 (I cannot promise a golf tournament but the skiing well
be excellent). The University of
Utah Communication Faculty are excited for you to see the dramatic changes in
Salt Lake over the last few years. The
EC also selected a new editor for Communication
Reports. Beth LePoire,
University of California, Santa Barbara, is the new editor-elect.
The EC also approved a new registration and location for our website.
It was important to move outside a University server and find a place for
us to gain greater visibility and access. Through
the convention our new URL is a mirror of the website at California State
University, Fresno. The new address
is: http://www.westcomm.org. We
wanted WSCA as our first choice, but it is registered as a different
organization. So, WESTCOMM we are!
I would like to publicly thank John Cagle for being our first webmaster
and making this work. I am sure John will have more on the new website in other
areas of this newsletter.
To
the voices of others writing in this newsletter, I want to invite you to
Sacramento. The Hyatt Regency is a
beautiful property. The Capitol
Park and statehouse across the street are wonderful places to roam and get away
for a few minutes. Old Sacramento
is a fun place to shop, eat, and drink. The
Train Museum is an interesting piece of our American history which is so closely
tied to the light rail transportation systems which are making comebacks in many
of our Western cities. Lastly,
invite a colleague or friend to join us for the scholarship and entertainment
that is so much the WSCA difference.
COME
TO WSCA 2000!
Dawn O. Braithwaite, WSCA President-Elect
Our
program is complete for an outstanding Year 2000 WSCA convention at the
Sacramento Hyatt February 25-29, 2000. Please
make your plans to join us to kick off 2000 in grand style!
Our
conference theme is "Centering Communication in Our Communities." As we meet
together, we will highlight ways our scholarship, teaching, and service takes
place in our communities and makes a contribution within our communities. In
addition, our crack Local Arrangements Committee Chair, John Williams and his
Sacramento colleagues have planned a golf tournament, sock hop, and beer tasting
event you won't want to miss! Sacramento
is a great conference city, the hotel is beautiful, and the program will be
top-notch!
We
have a great program planned, with one large preconference and 11 workshops
scheduled Saturday, and 133 panel programs scheduled (not including workshops,
business meetings, luncheon and other special sessions), all of which include a
total of 625 participants to date. With
all the other attendees we are expecting excellent attendance and a great
conference!
We'll
kick off the convention on Saturday, February 26th with the Basic Course
Conference on "Preparing Students to be Community Members: Implementing
Service Learning in the College Classroom." Betsy Bach has planned this
interactive workshop focusing on the exciting national trends
in
service learning for faculty and student instructors in K-12, community college,
and university settings. In addition, there will be eleven excellent workshops
offered on a variety of other topics that day.
All of these events are detailed on the web page and in the convention
mailing.
The
Western Forensics Association will be sponsoring their annual tournament and we
encourage you to bring your students and attend. There will be golf and other
fun events to choose from. We'll
end Saturday with a Newcomer's Reception, a Convention Kickoff featuring one of
our grand
(and
always raucous) "WSCA Great Town Hall Debates," followed by our
traditional No-Host gathering, to greet old friends and make new ones.
The
highlight of Sunday, February 27th will be a brunch and Keynote Address,
featuring Dr. John P. Kretzmann, Co-Director of the Asset-Based Community
Development (ABCD) Institute, of the Institute for Policy Research at
Northwestern University. The title
of his talk will be, "The Gifts of Community: Strengthening Relationships
between Universities and Communities."
We
will program a great variety of informative and intriguing panels Sunday,
Monday, and Tuesday morning, presenting state-of-the-art scholarship and
pedagogy. Interest groups will be conducting their business meetings. And, of
course, not to be missed are two staples of the WSCA
conference:
the always fun WSCA Sock Hop on Sunday evening (now till 1 AM!) and the
Convention Luncheon on Monday.
See
you in Sacramento!
New
Communication Reports Editor
Beth
A. LePoire has been appointed Editor-Elect of Communication Reports.
She is an Associate Professor at the University of California at Santa
Barbara. She
earned her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona.
Her areas of teaching and research interests include interpersonal
communication; nonverbal communication; substance dependence and mental health.
Dr.
Le Poire
was appointed by the WSCA Executive Council to a three-year term as the editor of
Communication Reports. Her first issue will be published Winter, 2001 (14:1). New manuscript submissions to CR should
be sent to:
Beth Le
Poire, Editor-elect
Communication Reports
Department of Communication
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4020
The Executive Council also clarified the editorial policies of
Communication Reports. While the journal continues to encourage shorter, more focused articles, longer manuscripts are also welcome. CR showcases
communication scholarship that devotes a substantial portion of their contents to analyzing texts and/or data,
and it encourages a broad range of topics, methods, and analytical tools.
http://www.westcomm.org/
WSCA
is moving its website to http://www.westcomm.org/.
For a reasonable period of time we will mirror the website on the new and
the old URLs.
At some point, through magic rituals known only to webmasters, the old
website will fade out and disappear when no one is using it anymore.
Why a new website.
The new website will facilitate on-line monetary transactions (e.g., for
membership, convention registration, etc.), something that is now being studied
by the Executive Council.
Call for
Papers
Special
Issue of Communication Studies
Communication Studies
is seeking submissions for a special issue focused on Identity Management
processes in face-to-face interaction across a variety of contexts.
The term Identity Management is
intended to be inclusive of any perspective that addresses the creation,
maintenance, disruption, repair, and mutual negotiation of situated social
identities, including but not limited to impression management,
self-presentation, face and facework, and politeness theory. Investigations of
interaction episodes in which social identity is salient (e.g., conflict,
compliance-gaining, self-disclosure, social support, sexual negotiation, etc.)
and/or of particular interactional settings in which social identity is salient
(e.g., health care settings, classrooms, the workplace, etc.) are encouraged.
Theoretical, critical, and empirical work (both qualitative and quantitative
designs) is welcome.
Submission deadline is April 30,
2000. Five copies of the manuscript should be submitted to:
Sandra Metts and William Cupach
Department of Communication
Illinois State University
Normal, IL 61790-4480
Author
of Provocative Book to Speak at WSCA
Leonard Shlain, author of The
Alphabet Versus The Goddess, will present a media (powerpoint) review of
his book in a special WSCA program at the Sacramento Convention.
Shlain's thesis is that the development of literacy (written languages)
stimulated the need for left brain (masculine) processing and diminished the
importance of feminine ways of knowing. He further suggests that the increasing
emphasis on visual media (TV, film, computer screens) require more right brain
activity (feminine) that enlarges the significance of feminine perceptual
processes in our culture. Following his presentation, Kathy Adams at CSU Fresno,
Mary-Lou Galician at Arizona State University and Karen Rasmussen at CSU Long
Beach, will offer responses from three different communication perspectives. The
program is sponsored jointly by the Executives Club, Media Studies and ORWAC and
is scheduled for 10:00 - 11:20, MONDAY, February 28 (just before the convention
luncheon).
Merger
Meeting at WSCA Convention
A
special joint business meeting of Communication
and the Law and Freedom of Speech
interest groups is scheduled for Sunday from 5:30-6:30.
The main subject of the meeting is to conclude discussions and vote on a
proposal to combine the two groups. If you are not able to attend the meeting
but wish to offer comments please contact David Wagner (916-278-6078), chair of
Communication and the Law, or Nancy Oft Rose, chair of Freedom of Speech.
