Michael Slater: ICA Presidential Candidate Statement
Nomination to run for ICA president is a significant honor and responsibility. I accepted this nomination both as an expression of my gratitude for the key role ICA has played in my own professional life, and out of the desire to contribute as best I can to its continued vibrancy as an intellectual community.
ICA is my primary intellectual home. I’ve attended all but one ICA conference since 1986, and have presented papers in six different divisions of ICA. I spent six years as vice chair elect/vice chair/chair/past chair of the Health Communication Division, chaired and served on the ICA nomination committee and on various award committees, and was elected as an ICA Fellow in 2010 (click to view/download my CV). Other involvements include four years as founding chair of the Coalition for Health Communication, which helps coordinate activity between the health communication divisions of ICA, the National Communication Association, and the American Public Health Association, and committee and panel service for the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Office of National Drug Control Prevention, and the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, representing the perspective of communication scholarship in these multidisciplinary science and policy contexts.
My first experiences as a graduate student at ICA did much to incubate my excitement about being a communication scholar, and my commitment to an academic career. While ICA has grown and evolved, the virtues of support, civility, accessibility, and intellectual energy that I experienced then continue to characterize the association. It seems to me that the primary task for an ICA president is to help preserve and encourage these qualities as the organization evolves. With respect to change, I see three major issues ahead. ICA will continue to grow as the discipline grows worldwide. ICA will need to further reflect the increasing global presence of our discipline. As it grows, ICA will be challenged to maintain the qualities of accessibility and community that have characterized the association over the years. In the process, we will be challenged to continue to deepen the intellectual quality and social impact of the communication field.
Increasing Internationalization
The maturation of ICA to an increasingly international association reflects in my view the increasing maturation of the communication discipline itself. Communication as an academic field of study is gaining increasing recognition institutionally across the world. Moving from non-North America settings for conferences every third instead of every fourth year has been a step towards becoming a more fully international organization. I look forward to the day when the ICA conference meets as often in Europe and in Asia as it does in North America, and with meetings on occasion in South American and Africa. I look forward to this not only because I value ICA as an international intellectual community, but even more because it would reflect the continued growth and development of communication as a discipline around the world. Obviously, though, such a goal cannot be reached until the communication discipline and ICA membership is strong enough worldwide for such a selection of conference venues to be financially responsible.
I would encourage efforts to strengthen ICA participation worldwide through continuing to support existing ICA initiatives (e.g., expanded cooperation with regional associations, exploring shared memberships/fees and collaborative regional conferences such as the one planned in October in Chile), and by organizing separate task force committees for Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. The growth and development of communication scholarship in Europe and Asia has been remarkable and some of the challenges (e.g., varying levels of institutional and national recognition and support) are not unlike those faced over the years in the U.S. The charge for such task force committees, as I currently envision it (pending input from executive board and other ICA members and potential members of such committees), would be to identify ways ICA can, within its mission and resources, help support the development of the communication discipline in each region in cooperation with regional associations, with a secondary but key goal of increased membership in each region.
Maintaining Community and an Accessible Conference for a Growing Association
World-wide growth also poses organizational challenges. How do we make possible broad participation without having so many sessions that many are at odd times and under-attended, having divisions competing with themselves with many simultaneous sessions, and making conference venues in the many countries in which hotels charge for meeting rooms unaffordable?
The basic principles I hold with respect to conference planning include a) providing where possible flexibility to divisions, so they may maintain their norms of scholarly exchange; b) trying to hold a single-hotel conference if possible to support a sense of community, cost-control in countries where hotels charge for meeting space, and the ability to locate the conference in a wider variety of venues; and c) to minimize very early start or very late end times for sessions, so that sessions are not underattended due to scheduling.
To maintain these principles, we will, if the organization continues to grow, need to include more presentations in the same amount of space and time. There are several approaches I’d like to explore in support of these principles, pending input and feedback from divisional program planners and ICA staff: One is to encourage expanded use of high-density sessions and of plenary poster sessions—the energy and excitement in the latter have been increasing in recent years; having plenary poster sessions serve as a kind of reception, scheduled before dinner with a cash bar and some other refreshments, may further increase the attractiveness of this approach. Another is to encourage divisional programmers to focus on programming papers together on panels that have enough commonality to truly provide intellectual synergy, and where appropriate intellectual debate, and making use of high-density and poster sessions to program papers when that is not the case. Poster and high-density assignment would then reflect such questions of programming coherence and not suggest a rating score that papers in competitive panel sessions (except of course for top 3 or top 4 paper sessions). If such approaches are taken, it would probably be necessary to include an indication when submitting a paper if one’s home institution will not support travel to participate in a poster session, so that can be taken into account when programming papers. Finally, divisions that consider the one-on-one discussion characteristic of a poster session inconsistent with their norms of scholarly exchange might, if they need to increase numbers of presentations due to growth, use early or late time slots since they can’t increase numbers of accepted papers by using the poster format.
My hope is such approaches can permit balancing of growth, divisional scholarly norms, access to the conference by a broad range of scholars, and flexibility/affordability of venues.
Visibility and Impact of the Communication Discipline
A priority for me is expanding the role and impact of communication scholars and scholarship in addressing issues of social as well as intellectual importance. I have as noted above experience in this role within the U.S. I would look forward to exploring ways ICA might support increased impact of communication scholarship, in terms of its own organizational activities, in collaboration with regional associations, and/or in support of the activities of individual scholars. This seems to me to be a topic certainly worthy of closer examination and discussion both at our annual conference and on the executive board.
Finally, I’d like to again extend my appreciation to the nominating committee, to those who have expressed their support to me and shared their ideas, and to Peter Vorderer for his willingness to run as well. I am confident that whomever is elected, we will work together to support the future of the ICA.
Image courtesy of Ohio State U.