I am seeking the position of Second Vice President of the National Communication Association. I have been a member of NCA for more than thirty years. It has nurtured my scholarship and my teaching, it has given me opportunities for service, and it has fostered my development as an academic leader.
My interest in leading NCA stems from my longtime involvement in the association at many levels, from serving on multiple committees to attending the convention each year to editing an NCA journal. Perhaps most important to my decision was my recent service as Chair of the Publications Council and as a member of the Executive Committee and Legislative Assembly.
Participating in decision-making on behalf of the association, being exposed to the breadth of concerns across NCA’s membership, and experiencing firsthand the tremendous dedication of the officers and the NCA staff, I was convinced of NCA’s importance to the growth and development of its members and to the field of Communication as a whole. I would be honored to serve as an NCA officer.
Serving as an associate dean for the last three years, I have developed a much broader view of higher education, both its longstanding problems and its potential to change lives. Scholarly societies like NCA serve a key role in higher education: they support scholarship through journal publication, they foster networking and exposure to cutting-edge research through conferences, and they promote professional development in countless ways.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created tremendous challenges for both higher education and for scholarly societies, and I want to see NCA survive and thrive. I believe that we can be a key resource for our members in these difficult times, but we will need to devise new ways of understanding what they need and how we can meet those needs. I would like to be part of that process.
I also recognize that there are areas in which NCA could better live up to its mission and strategic plan. Our nation is grappling, yet again, with its responsibility to address systemic racism and remedy racial injustice. NCA needs strategies to develop a more diverse and inclusive leadership, at all levels, from its divisions to its officers, and we need to foster conversations among our members about how we can make our association more inclusive for everyone.
I would be proud to be part of that effort.