Several activities designed specifically for ICA student members are being organized for the association’s 2012 conference. Started at last year’s conference with remarkable success, the Master Class lectures are quickly becoming an ICA tradition. These Master Class lectures are designed primarily to give students and emerging scholars an opportunity to learn first-hand from senior and established scholars. The Master Class lectures that will be held at the association’s 2012 conference will be as follows:

Saturday May 26

• Professor James Curran (Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre, U of London): From Misunderstanding the Internet to Reinterpreting the Rise of Entertainment
  
• Professor Stanley Deetz (Director, Center for the Study of Conflict, Collaboration and Creative Governance, U of Colorado, Boulder): Communication, Democracy and the Governance Challenge
  
• Professor Jack McLeod (Professor Emeritus School of Journalism & Mass Communication, U of Wisconsin, Madison): Media and Citizenship: Searching for "Fairness and Balance" in Times of Increasing Inequality

Sunday May 27

• Professor Mark Knapp (Professor Emeritus, U of Texas, Austin): Doing it Interpersonally
  
• Professor Chin Chuan Lee (Chair, Department of Media and Communication, City U of Hong Kong): On Being an International Scholar
  
• Professor Dafna Lemish (Chair, Department of Radio-TV, College of Mass Communication & Media Arts, Southern Illinois U, Carbondale): Creating a Shared Arena: When Feminist Scholarship Meets Children and Media

There will also be an array of preconferences that might interest students attending the 2012 ICA conference. Three of the most exciting of these are the Organizational Communication Junior Scholar Workshop, the Political Communication Graduate Student Workshop, and the Third Communication and Technology Doctoral Consortium.

The Organizational Communication Junior Scholar Workshop has the following description:

“This workshop is open to all junior members of the division who have completed the requirements for the Ph.D. This includes, for example, pre-tenure (and its equivalent), clinical, and adjunct faculty in academic institutions; postdoctoral researchers; and researchers working in industry, government, and nonprofit sectors while in the early stages of their careers. The purpose of the workshop is twofold. First, the workshop will provide opportunities for networking and community building among the early-career scholars in the discipline from around the world. The future of our discipline is the cohort of junior scholars who will assume leadership positions in the field in the years to come. Our field benefits from a set of scholars who are connected intellectually and socially and who feel attachment to a vibrant community. Second, the workshop will offer an interactive forum in which colleagues who are mid-career and senior scholars can interact with and provide advice to early-career scholars regarding professional opportunities and challenges. Part of what makes Organizational Communication such a cohesive discipline is that connections are constantly being forged among scholars at various careers stages. We all have much to learn from each other.”

Topics at this preconference will include:

• Strategies to recruit organizations to participate in organizational communication research projects
• Selecting journals for submissions and managing revisions
• Effective strategies for mentoring and being mentored, and managing reviews (three-year, tenure)
• Securing external funding for research
• Balancing the demands of professional (research, teaching, service) and family lives

The Political Communication Graduate Student Workshop has the following description:

“The preconference goals include providing guidance, feedback and professional socialization to political communication graduate students at the master's and doctoral levels, introducing graduate students to ICA and inviting them to take part in the academic discourse on political communication through ICA, and cultivating a network among young political communication scholars. To achieve these goals, the preconference will bring together a select group of graduate students working on political communication projects and provide them with the opportunity to present and discuss their projects in a constructive atmosphere. The preconference will also address common issues graduate students face, including working toward publication and building a c.v. The event will take place at the U of Arizona in Tucson.”

The Third Communication and Technology Doctoral Consortium has the following description: “The consortium intends to bring together Ph.D. candidates working on Communication and Technology to give them the opportunity to present and discuss their research in a constructive and international atmosphere. The goals of the event are to provide feedback and advice to participating Ph.D. candidates on their in-progress research thesis. Moreover, the doctoral consortium will provide the opportunity to meet experts as well as fellow Ph.D. candidates from different backgrounds working on related topics. During the consortium, students will be invited to present their work, following which they will receive feedback from their fellow students and faculty participants, all of whom will have read the proposals in advance of the Doctoral Consortium. In addition, one faculty participant will be assigned to respond in detail to each proposal. Besides the presentations of proposals, there will also be discussion of other topics such as ethics, research methods, publishing the thesis, and positioning one’s work for the job market.”

Other ICA preconferences of potential interest to students with an array of research orientations include: Mobile Communication, Community, and Locative Media Practices: From the Everyday to the Revolutionary; It’s More Than Just A Game: Best Practices In Video Game Research Design and Methodology; Communication and the Ethics of Consumption; Occupy ICA; Communication and Community: Bridging Disciplinary Divides; and Media Research in Transnational Spheres.

We hope that ICA student members will attend the conference in Phoenix and enjoy many of these activities.