Page and Johnson Legacy Scholar and Educator Grants

Request for Proposals

The Arthur W. Page Center at the Penn State College of Communications announces its annual Page and Johnson Legacy Scholar/Educator competition for the study of integrity in public communication. 

The Center will award grants of $1,000 to $5,000 each to support scholars and professionals making important contributions to knowledge, practice, or public understanding of ethics and responsibility in public communication. 

The grants are awarded in the name of Arthur W. Page and Robert Wood Johnson.  Page, the longtime vice president for public relations at AT&T, is often regarded as the founder of the modern practice of corporate public relations.  He was the first person in a public relations position to serve as an officer and director of a major corporation and, in that capacity, was widely known for management according to the Page Principles, for his guidelines for ethical and effective communication with the public and for responsible corporate behavior.  Johnson built Johnson & Johnson from a small family business into the world’s largest health and medical care product company and one known for its high standards of social responsibility.  He wrote the Johnson & Johnson Credo, probably the most widely known and widely regarded statement of ethics in the corporate world. 

The Center seeks to foster a modern understanding and application of the Page Principles and the Johnson & Johnson Credo by supporting innovative research, educational, or public service projects in a wide variety of academic disciplines and professional fields.  Last year, 15 academics and professionals were awarded a total of $25,650 in grants.

This year’s competition will include special calls for:

Communicating Corporate Social Responsibility 
In today’s environment, corporate social responsibility has emerged as an important management concept. Publics expect companies to be engaged in responsible activities that make a significant contribution to communities and society. Though corporations have adopted more sustainable and responsible practices, they often struggle to communicate effectively about their CSR activities. Practitioners find that promoting environmental successes can be risky as they sometimes are met with skepticism or backlash from activist groups. Too, traditional methods of promoting community involvement or diversity may do little to bolster the reputation of the company.

The Arthur W. Page Center seeks grant proposals that address the issues of corporate social responsibility communication. Research projects should deepen the field’s understanding of the issues with a focus on real-world solutions for practitioners. Submissions should clearly demonstrate how the research will benefit the practice of public relations and how the authors intend to disseminate findings to the field. Grants will range from $1,000 to $5,000.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Measuring the impact of CSR communication
• Benefits of communicating about diversity in the corporate environment
• Leveraging community partnerships in communication
• Promoting corporate volunteer programs
• Building relationships with advocacy groups
• Communicating about environmental impacts
• Ethics of CSR communication

The research conducted from approved proposals will be evaluated for a special issue of a public relations journal on corporate social responsibility guest edited by the author of this call.  Authors of successful submissions may be asked to participate in a webinar or conference panel and/or make their work available for distribution through a website on CSR.

See the Page Center website for details, (http://thepagecenter.comm.psu.edu/ , click on Page Legacy Scholar Grants). Questions should be directed to Dr. Denise Bortree at dsb177@psu.edu or (814) 865-1274.

Teaching Modules on Ethics in Journalism or Public Relations
The use of teaching modules in the college classroom encourages active learning by students as they link to historical and current information through online resources.  These modules are designed for undergraduate students but also have value for professionals.  The modules will be designed to encourage the use of multiple sources, including interviews with Journalism and Public Relations luminaries located in the Page Center’s Oral History Collection, or from Page’s Speech Archive collected from his days at AT&T.  Each module includes a set of instructions for guiding students toward clearly articulated learning objectives. Materials and/or links to materials are included, along with a supplemental teaching guide.  Completed modules are available online and can be viewed as examples in the development of proposals, and ultimately, final products. Awards of $2,500 will be provided for completed modules.

Questions should be directed to Marie Hardin at mch208@psu.edu or (814) 865-1395.

Deadline for receipt of proposals:  January 10, 2013

The Center was established in 2004 through a leadership gift from Lawrence G. Foster, a distinguished Penn State alumnus and retired corporate vice president for public relations at Johnson & Johnson.  The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson 1962 Charitable Trust also are major contributors to Center’s work in ethics in public communications and the role of public relations in advancing corporate responsibility, including support for the Legacy Scholar program.

For more information on the Legacy Scholar/Educator competition, contact Cinda Kostyak, associate director, The Arthur W. Page Center, College of Communications, 4 Carnegie Building, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802, 814-863-6307, or visit our website at: http://thepagecenter.org.  

International Association for Conflict Management Annual Conference
30 June - 3 July 2013, Tacoma, Washington, USA
Submissions due 8 February 2013

VIII Biennial International Conference on Intercultural Research

Where: University of Nevada--Reno, Nevada
When: June 23-27, 2013

The International Academy for Intercultural Research (IAIR) invites you to join us at the 8th Biennial International Conference on Intercultural Research.  The conference will be hosted by the University of Nevada, located in the beautiful city of Reno, Nevada—“The Biggest Little City in the World.”

The IAIR is an explicitly interdisciplinary forum which promotes and facilitates intercultural research in the areas of Psychology, Sociology, Communication, Education, Anthropology, Management, Political Science, and other areas of specialization in the social sciences and practice.  The 2013 conference theme is “Pushing the Frontiers of Intercultural Research: Asking Critical Questions.”  The immediate objective of the conference is to provide an international forum for participants to consider and question information through meaningful dialogues. Whether we are conducting research or applying it, we need to consider whether we are asking the types of critical questions that are necessary.  Are we pushing the boundaries of our fields, or staying bounded by existing frameworks of knowledge, methodology, or applications?

All theoretical and empirical works regardless of method or discipline are solicited. Members and non-members at all levels of training and practice are encouraged to submit proposals.  There are three submission deadlines: November 1st, January 15th, and February 15th.  Proposals received by the first deadline will be given first consideration and so forth.

More information about the conference and the call for proposals is available at the following website: http://www.intercultural-academy.net/iair-2013-home.html

Canadian Journal of Communication – Special Issue

Call for Papers: Bridging Communication and Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Guest Editors:
Daniel J. Paré, Department of Communication, School of Information Studies, and Institute for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP), University of Ottawa
Florence Millerand, Department of Social and Public Communication, University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM), Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST),
Lorna Heaton, Department of Communication, University of Montreal, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST)

In recent years, there has been a notable cross-fertilization of ideas from the fields of communication studies and science and technology studies (STS). Researchers from both domains are increasingly seeking to better understand various facets of the relationship between communication and sociotechnical infrastructures. For example, growing numbers of communication researchers have been employing conceptual tools and methods offered by STS to assist in understanding the sociotechnical character and situatedness of media and information technologies and their configurations. Likewise, in organizational communication, STS concepts have brought attention to the ways in which artifacts influence organizational life. At the same time, more and more STS researchers are drawing upon various facets of critical inquiry provided by communication studies as they examine phenomena that weave together the material and symbolic. For instance a range of conceptual tools from communication studies pertaining to the analysis of audio, textual, and visual objects have been used to examine mediated practices such as the informatization of the body, the role of images in popular representations of science, and the role of rhetoric in the development and introduction of new technologies.

Focus of the Special Issue
This special issue aims to contribute to the growing dialogue between communication studies and STS by investigating complementarities and divergences between the two fields. In particular, we are interested in exploring the historical evolution of both fields, points of intersection (e.g. conceptual, methodological, theoretical), and articulations of explicit bridges between communication studies and STS. Authors are invited to submit original conceptual or empirically grounded papers, addressing topics such as those listed below in a variety of contexts (e.g. digital media, environment, health, organization, transitioning economies):

• Collaboration and participation
• Design, production, and consumption
• Ethics and Morality
• Gender
• Identities
• Infrastructure
• Innovation
• Knowledge and expertise
• Mobilities and migration
• Politics, policy and regulation
• Risk
• Social Justice
• Space
• Surveillance

The above topics are merely indicative and this special issue will welcome papers discussing other themes relevant to understanding the intersections between communication studies and STS. We invite submissions of papers (7000-9000 words in length) in English or in French. For information about the Canadian Journal of Communication and for the submission guidelines please visit http://www.cjc-online.ca/submissions.php.

Papers should be submitted electronically to the guest editors at the email addresses provided below.
Daniel J. Paré: dpar2@uottawa.ca
Florence Millerand: millerand.florence@uqam.ca
Lorna Heaton: lorna.heaton@umontreal.ca

Prospective authors are encouraged to contact the guest editors for any enquires about the special issue.

Important Dates
The deadline for submission of papers is: Friday March 15, 2013.
Tentative date for publication: Autumn 2013