Are you or your doctoral students interested in cultivating opportunities in pursuing careers outside of traditional academic jobs? If so, this workshop series is for you.

Arizona State University’s Transformation Project and NCA invite you to a virtual workshop series focusing on alternative careers beyond the academy. Join us at this conversation on #AltAC focused on exploring different career options for Communication PhDs led by top communication professionals and researchers.

Although the workshops are particularly geared at current graduate students and recent PhD graduates in Communication, this workshop series should be of interest to those exploring alternative academic career options beyond the academy for themselves or their mentees.

For now, Save the Date, more information will follow soon!

Check out the schedule of speakers here: shorturl.at/fiyHZ

Questions? Reach out to us at marco.dehnert@asu.edu

This series is funded by an Advancing the Discipline Grant from NCA.

Cheers,

Sarah J. Tracy and Marco Dehnert (organizers)

The Transformation Project

The Hugh Downs School of Human Communication

Arizona State University-Tempe

As First Vice President, I want to thank you for participating in our recent survey about your membership perceptions and experiences. The Member Services Committee, chaired by Dr. Andrea McCracken from Oregon Institute of Technology, appreciates that you took time out of your busy schedules to provide the information. A big thank you also to those members who participated in preliminary interviews with the students who worked on the membership project this semester. They used key informant interviews representing faculty from different types of institutions and graduate students to develop the membership survey we distributed. Our goal in working with this SDSU class this semester is to enhance the membership experience to meet the needs and expectations of our members.

We look forward to connecting with you all in 2021!

With Gratitude,

Heather Canary

WSCA First Vice President

Professor & Director, SDSU School of Communication

Email: hcanary@sdsu.edu

The purpose of these virtual events is two-fold:

First, we want to offer members the opportunity to grow in their teaching, research, and service in connection with one another.  This could mean anything from a training to use a new methodological/analytic approach to workshops that connect current events meaningfully to our teaching, research, or service.

Second, we want to offer members the opportunity to build evidence for their engagement and leadership in communication studies.  With convention cancellation we know that some members might want new opportunities to evidence academic activity in reports to their departments and institutions.  Proposal of, acceptance of, or attendance in a virtual event that has been competitively reviewed by an academic association may meet this need.

In their proposals for virtual offerings, we ask that members include:

1.     Title of the virtual event

2.     Event organizer(s) and any additional speakers/trainers/hosts (names, affiliation, and contact information)

3.     Description of the virtual event that includes the following in 400 words or less:

a.     main goals of the event

b.     rationale for/benefits of the event (including which interest group(s) might be well-served by the event)

c.     summary of what will take place/be covered during the event

4.     Planned structure of the event that includes the following in 200 words or less:

a.     brief outline of event structure with time estimates to show length of event elements

b.     identification of the synchronous/asynchronous components of the event

c.     statement of the technological experience/proficiency of the person(s) organizing the event, particularly in terms of using the technology proposed for offering the event

5.     List of resources required for this event, including those needed to make it accessible and inclusive for as many interested members as possible

a.     Please include in this detailed list any costs associated with offering the event

Proposals and any questions should be sent to President-Elect Christina G. Yoshimura at Christina.yoshimura@umontana.edu by 11:59pm (Pacific) on Friday, October 30, 2020.  Proposals should be sent in .doc or .docx format so that identifying information can be edited out prior to review. A panel of reviewers from across interest groups/backgrounds will review and rank blinded proposals, and we hope to communicate decisions to all submitters by November 30, 2020. 

If you are not currently a member of WSCA but would like to submit a proposal, please go to our site to register at our reduced-for-COVID rates before submitting (https://www.westcomm.org/page/JoinWSCA). Only proposals from registered WSCA members will be reviewed.

Last Friday the WSCA Executive Council held a second meeting to determine how to move through our next year as an association.  We believe that focusing on serving our members well and providing new benefits from our Association in this year without a convention are our two most important goals. With guidance from the Finance Committee we worked with our budget and our Association reserve funds to find new ways to meet these goals.

First, we will be offering free renewal memberships for the 2020-2021 year to anyone who was registered as a WSCA member in the 2019-2020 year, and free memberships to any graduate students who would like to join WSCA regardless of prior membership. For others who were not a member during 2019-2020 year we are offering memberships at 50% off the regular price, which includes subscriptions to the Western Journal of Communication and Communication Reports. 

Second, we are pleased to be able to offer funding for member-submitted proposals for virtual workshops/trainings that aim to cultivate membership teaching, research, and service in novel ways over this year. A separate call for submissions will include more details and will be released in the next week. The virtual events we will offer this year are not a replacement for our convention, but are stand-alone events that we hope will build professional development and community-building for our membership over this year we will spend apart.

Finally, in recognition of the pause in Association tasks and functioning this year we have asked all committee members/chairs and interest group leaders to join our Executive Council and elected officials in continuing in their roles for an additional year. In addition to postponing our annual convention we are also postponing Association awards (with the exception of the Aubrey Fisher Outstanding Journal Article Award).  We believe that this best meets our practice of fully recognizing award-winners during our annual luncheon and heralding them as a community.  We very much look forward to soliciting nominations for our awards next year, and any nominations submitted for this year will be considered at that time as well.

We are doing our best in uncertain times, but we know that we will do better with your feedback.  So please, connect with me at christina.yoshimura@umontana.edu any time to let me know what I can do to reduce uncertainty and help meet your needs and the collective needs of all WSCA members. Thank you for remaining with us as we work our way through a bizarre 2020 – we are here for each other.

by Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director of Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Some of you may have noticed that the WSCA office has moved to the South. Not to worry, WSCA is Western!! To clarify, the WSCA office moves with the Executive Director. Throughout recent years, it has “lived” in California, Utah, and Colorado even though it is incorporated in Utah. I have recently taken a position in Tennessee, therefore, WSCA is currently housed in the not-so-deep South at Middle Tennessee State University.

WSCA has members around the country as well as around the world. Thus, it is feasible that elected and appointed officers as well as journal editors do not physically reside in the west. Nevertheless, they choose to remain a member and volunteer for the best regional association in the country. J WSCA will continue to operate as “business as usual” despite the Executive Director’s new mailing address. 

It has been just over a year that we have transitioned to our new database. I hope you find it as easy to use and navigate as I do. Now that you may be a little more comfortable with it, I write to you to share some information that may make your lives a little easier.

First, you may be getting annoyed by all the notifications of people changing their profile. Yes, if you are a member of any interest group (and I hope you are), every time anyone in any of those interest groups updates a profile, you will get an email notification. Don’t be annoyed – turn off the notification! To do this, log on to the WSCA website with your user name and password. Then go to Manage Profile (left side). Then go to Preferences (top right). Then scroll through all the choices you have to receive notifications. If the box is unchecked you will NOT receive notifications. Conversely, if the box is checked you WILL receive notifications.

Second, you may be wondering why your journals are arriving at your home. Unfortunately, the system will not merge home and work addresses. That doesn’t really matter to you, but when I download mailing addresses to send to Taylor and Francis, it matters to me. When reviewing addresses, the majority of people have completed the home address field, either with their home address or work address. Therefore, I use that one to snail mail journals. If you want the journals mailed to you, use whatever address you want in the home field.

Related to this, your home and work addresses, as well as other member profile information, is available in the member directory. If you don’t want that information available to others, you must set the visibility selector (icon on the left of each field) to Private, which makes it not visible in your profile. To access this, go to log on, go to My Profile (on the right) and under Information & Settings, click on Edit Bio (top left). Note that if you make your email private, group administrators (such as interest group Chairs, etc.) can still email you if you are a member of that interest group, as part of their bulk email system.

Third, each interest group Chair has administrative rights to that interest group. In this capacity, the IG Chair can bulk email everyone in that IG. Moreover, the IG Chair can create a website, message members, and blog. What’s the difference between email and a message? Emails get sent directly to the members of the IG who have included an email address. However, if the Chair decided to message members, each member will receive an email stating that they have a message to retrieve. Of course, if members have unclicked the preferences box to NOT be notified of messages, they won’t know they have a message to retrieve until they log on to the site. To retrieve messages, members will have to log on to the website and in the My Profile box on the right, click on Messages. While Messages may seem burdensome, the system keeps the IG messages available as a running history so others can view them in the future. It’s great for continuity but until people get used to checking their messages, it may not be great for timely responses.

Some of you may have read President Paul Mongeau's statement in the last WSCA News:

"The last time WSCA was in San Diego, we set the all-time WSCA record for conference registrations (over 800 participants)."

As the program planner for that convention in 1988 (yes - 28 years ago!) I am still proud of that record though I admit that the convention setting and the marvelous activities arranged by the local host, Janis Andersen, had as much or more to do with the record attendance.

My friendly challenge to you is to BREAK THAT RECORD. This was (and will be) one of the most memorable conventions in WSCA's history. The conference setting is in an attractive location and the combination of sun and sea offers a magical place (no apologies to Disney!) for greeting old and new WSCA colleagues. I encourage you to submit your papers and panel ideas. Even if you have no burning ideas at the moment - plan to experience this once in a generation opportunity. I know you will be energized by the location, the activities, and the programs the planners will prepare for you. Records are meant to be broken - 28 years is long enough for any record - let's set a new WSCA attendance record at this convention!

See you there - and - if this is not in your top 5 convention experiences EVER - look me up - I'll buy the first round!