President's Message: Meeting the Challenges of an International Organization

by Cynthia Stohl, ICA President, U of California - Santa Barbara

From the UN (United Nations) to MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières),  APRU (Association of  Pacific Rim Universities) to ECA (Escola de Comunicação e Artes) and ICA (International Communication Association), international organizations face several challenges. Besides the ubiquitous, confusing alphabet soup of acronyms, issues of language, cultural diversity, legitimacy, transparency, inclusion, responsiveness, and accessibility are increasingly complex and need continual attention. Last year in my presidential candidate statement I wrote, "my goals center upon enhancing both our global connectivity and sense of scholarly community that together form the core of ICA." Our legitimacy as the premier academic international communication organization is well established, but to maintain our value to our members and  uphold our commitment to advance the scholarly study of human communication by supporting excellence in academic research worldwide, we must continue to expand our horizons, reach out and  provide needed services to our diverse membership, and be responsive to technological developments and  the global changes in the relationships among  academic institutions and society at large.  In my Newsletter columns I will try to keep you informed about ICA’s latest initiatives, successes, disappointments (hopefully not many), and new challenges. I hope that each of these columns starts a conversation among us and that you will email me with suggestions and comments. I look forward to our interactions.

Our highly successful conference in Phoenix, with participants from over 60 countries, was just the beginning of new efforts to enhance and foster our sense of community, encourage participation in ICA activities, provide professional development opportunities, facilitate new ways of sharing ideas and research results, and to debate the issues of the day. Along with many other ICA Board Members, besides going to panels, I spent a great deal of time at the Phoenix conference in meetings and informal conversations getting a sense of our accomplishments, needs, and what our members see as our greatest opportunities and biggest challenges. It was gratifying to learn of the progress we have made as an international organization and very informative in terms of where we need to go from here. In light of all we learned, I have been working with the ICA staff, members of the executive committee and ICA Board, and dozens of ICA members to meet our goals, continue the initiatives started by my predecessors, and create new opportunities.

For example, this summer (I know it is winter for those in the Southern Hemisphere, but having just experienced three weeks in NYC with  temperatures over 100°F/38°C, it is definitely summer for me) I am convening  three ad hoc committees to address several ongoing challenges. These committees are building upon the excellent work begun last year.

1. Awards: Over the last several years there has been concern that some ICA awards receive very few (if any) nominations, that descriptions of some awards are unclear and American-centric, that some awards are no longer supported by the people who originally sponsored them, and that there is regional imbalance in both nominations and recipients. To follow up on a task force report (chaired by Jake Harwood (U of Arizona)) presented at the Board Meeting in Phoenix, I have appointed an ad hoc committee, chaired by Ellen Wartella (Northwestern U), to develop a new call for awards that reflects the suggestions of the task force. We hope to have many of the recommendations in place to initiate a new call for awards early in the new year for the 2013 London conference.
   
2. Publications:  Under the guidance of our new chair of the Publications Committee, Frank Esser (U of Zurich), and based on feedback from ICA journal editors and our membership, we are working with the editors of all our journals to a) provide better information for scholars interested in how to get published in ICA, b) increase international representation on our editorial boards and in our publications, and c) facilitate greater involvement by ICA members across divisions in the journal reviewing process.
   
   Given that new technologies, new methodologies, transforming evaluation metrics, and other changes in international publishing have important implications for ICA publishing practices I am also putting together a special task force to address questions related to incorporating digital possibilities  into  our journals and the possible need for new publishing formats and processes that complement our traditional ways of publication. The recommendations of this task force will then be reviewed by the ICA Board and relevant standing committees for further action.
   
3. Enhancing global connectivity and our sense of community: Building upon our commitment to support regional conferences and partnerships that expand ICA's global presence we are working with scholars in four regions to develop proposals for 2013-2014 regional conferences in China, Brazil, Poland, and Australia.
   
   ICA will also continue to present special panels at related international conferences including IAMCR in Durbin, South Africa (July, 2012) and ECREA in Istanbul, Turkey, (October, 2012).
   
   Our Student Affairs committee and Internationalization Committee are also busy developing several proposals to increase our global connectivity including possible preconferences at the London conference next June.
   
   Working closely with JP Gutierrez, our Communication Director, our promotion of ICA members’ scholarship in the international media has begun to pay dividends. Blogs, newspaper articles, and several websites have recently carried accounts of communication studies related to children’s exposure  to background television stimuli (presented at ICA Phoenix)  and women’s sport-viewing habits (published in ICA journal Communication, Culture, & Critique). This initiative will continue to develop throughout the year and more information will be provided directly by JP. 

This is only a small sample of the things ICA is doing.  Each of these initiatives requires the commitment and dedication of many people. As I begin this year as President I want to express my appreciation for the continued support and collective wisdom of our executive committee, Larry Gross (U of Southern California), Barbie Zelizer (U of Pennsylvania), Francois Cooren (U of Montreal), and Francois Heinderyckx (U Libre de Bruxelles), the amazing ICA staff, the many ICA members who are willing to serve and chair committees, and of course, our executive director Michael Haley, who makes it all work together. Most of all thanks to all our members whose work represents the very best in our discipline, whose teaching and mentorship continue our tradition of excellence, and whose service assures a vibrant future for ICA.