CCA Minutes
March 21, 2005
Atlanta, GA
Present: ACA — no representatives
AEJMC — Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver, Florida International University; Mary Alice Shaver, University of Central Florida; Jennifer McGill, Executive Director
ASJMC — Russ Shain, Arkansas State; Charles Self, University of Oklahoma
BCCA — Valeria White, Florida A&M University
BEA — Joe Misiewicz, Ball State University; Louisa Nielsen, Executive Director
ICA — Jon Nussbaum, Penn State University; Robert Craig, University of Colorado-Boulder; Linda Putnam, Texas A&M University; Michael Haley, Executive Director
NCA — Martha Watson, University of Nevada-Las Vegas; Roger Smitter, Executive Director; Sherry Morreale, Associate Director
Guests: Michael Sweeney, Utah State University, AJHA; Lee Becker, University of Georgia; Tudor Vlad, University of Georgia; Marsha Vanderford, Center for Disease Control.
The meeting was called to order at 8.25 a.m. by President Charles Self, University of Okalahoma. Attendees introduced themselves.
The group discussed possible times for the next meeting. The two suggested dates were September 12 or 19 in Washington, DC. Self said a decision on the date would be made at the end of this meeting.
The first order of business was consideration of the membership application for the American Journalism Historians Association, which has about 300 members. AJHA president Michael Sweeney of Utah State gave a brief presentation on the activities and goals of the association. Discussion followed.
Motion: To approve the American Journalism Historians Association as a full voting member of CCA.
Moved by: Martha Watson
Seconded by: Mary Alice Shaver
Motion passed unanimously.
The CCA website has been up for about a year now. Self thanked Steve Anderson for all his work getting the site designed and working. It will need to be continually updated. One suggestion was to create an extensive links section for communication education resources or news items. Suggestions for links should go to Jennifer McGill, who is currently maintaining the site. Linda Putnam said she would write something to update the site on NRC. Self suggested that we need to develop a structure to provide more content for the site so that we can increase traffic. The suggestion was to have the incoming president and executive director send out reminders about this.
The suggestion was made to provide the convention dates/locations for all the groups on the CCA site so there is one central place to find all that information. Name of the person in charge of the convention would also be useful. This can include executive committee meetings too. The council also asked that a list of each association’s officers be added to the site. McGill asked the Executive Directors of each group to send that information to her.
The council considered the minutes from the October 2004 meeting.
Motion: To approve minutes as presented.
Moved by: Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver
Seconded by: Linda Putman
Motion passed unanimously
The council discussed ways to promote the NSF within each association and to build stronger connections between the groups. One way would be to invite NSF speakers to be on appropriate panels at conventions, especially when the conventions are in the DC area (since they would be paying their own travel expenses). Self asked for suggestions of other groups that CCA members might target as well. To make this work, officers need to contact the program planners about doing this well ahead of time. This job should fall to the individual Executive Directors to bring this to the attention of the planners.
Michael Haley agreed to develop a list of potential speakers and their area of expertise to share with all the members, and to prod the groups once a month about NSF and other opportunities. Once such a panel is lined up, it is also important to promote the panel among the delegates so there is good attendance at the session.
The council then considered the current CCA dues structure and the current budget (Appendix I). Discussion followed on the dues structure. The current dues structure was established when the council started in 1991 and was based on the size of the association (number of members). It was approved by CCA again in October 2003. Discussion followed on whether we should go to a flat dues structure or one based on the level of budget. There was a concern about the smaller groups not being able to pay if the flat rate was too high.
Motion: All member organizations send their current budget information to the CCA Executive Director and that a report be written about whether it would make more sense to use the budget size as the basis of dues, and what type of proposal would be fair to all groups.
Moved by: Martha Watson
Seconded by: Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver
Each association should include all sources of association income in presenting this information. All the Executive Directors will discuss this information and prepare a proposal for consideration in September. For the 2005 dues billing we will follow the approved levels. A related issue is just how much CCA needs to operate, which depends mainly on what projects/activities it may undertake in the future.
Motion passed unanimously
The council then discussed creating a description of the discipline. At the last meeting each group was to send ideas to Self and no one sent anything. Self presented a draft as a starting place for this discussion, which mainly came from the proposal to NCR to include communication as part of its next survey (Appendix II). The idea is to create two things: a brief description that would serve as an overview of the discipline, and a longer white paper that would be a more comprehensive description of the discipline.
Discussion followed. The suggestion was made that each association take this handout to each individual Executive Committee or wherever it is appropriate and discuss it. Each group should bring back ideas on what to include in this type of document that will represent the perspective of its mission and work. The idea is to develop a brief overview of the discipline and then develop a mechanism by which we can create a full white paper on the depth of the communication discipline. The second would be very detailed, even including some of the history and evolution of the field.
Putnam explained how the original language was developed for the NRC proposal and how difficult it was to get consensus on just what it should say. The council asked Putnam and Self to provide some information on just how this statement came to be and why it is the way it is. The council thought it was important to add words about instruction. Putnam and Self will edit this, write some background and send it out to the rest of CCA via email.
Motion: That all the member organizations take the edited version, along with the information about its development, to its appropriate groups, with the condition to keep the three areas, and then bring back suggestions for change so that it can be finalized at the next meeting. The idea is to keep this as a brief overview.
Moved by: Martha Watson
Seconded by: Mary Alice Shaver
Motion approved unanimously
The group discussed ways of getting information about research funding opportunities out to our members. The suggestion was made to have a page on the CCA website that links back to websites of funding groups that do calls like this. Links should be just to main websites pages. Sherry Morreale said that the NCA Research Board has been working on this. The NCA website contains these links, and the CCA site can link to that page. The page does not contain research funding opportunities for journalism so someone else would need to work on that part.
Groups should take this idea to their own Executive Committees. Other associations might want to develop a listing of such funding opportunities for their members. If they do, then CCA can link to those websites, and serve as a clearinghouse for this type of information.
Self asked the group for guidance on how to create the longer white paper discussed earlier. How should CCA go about getting such a paper started? NCA is working on a concept map for the field and that may have some bearing on this paper. A suggestion was made to use a Task Force approach. That would provide a better coordinated, more comprehensive type of document rather than having one person write the paper.
Michael Haley said he was part of something similar several years ago where a Monograph on the definition of the field was created, and is being used by NCA for public policy boards. There is also a related piece from Illinois. Self asked that we get copies of the Illinois piece and the Monograph and hold them for the September meeting. Haley said he could probably get these documents. The idea is to gather as many existing documents (including the concept map) as we can and have them for reference at the next meeting.
Morreale talked about a listing of projects that have been funded, and by what groups. It is not a real directory. The suggestion was made that AEJMC, ASJMC and BEA discuss with their boards the possibility of doing a similar listing for mass communication and journalism. The suggestion was made that this could also include information on how to approach funding groups. There seems to be a great need for that type of information.
Bob Craig talked about an initiative to create a list of faculty reviewers for NSF grant proposals, and also a way to get job announcements at federal agencies out to members of the associations. Craig said there are two things going on now related to this. They are the NCA Research Board’s work to develop a directory of reviewers, and an effort by health communication researchers across ICA and NCA to be more broadly recognized by appropriate federal agencies.
On the first initiative, there was discussion about the quality control of the reviewers listed. Discussion followed. These activities are getting good input, but it is a balancing act to make them inclusive, yet ensure quality. The NCA directory is not a public list and is being created by invitation only. CCA is likely not the place to produce this type of information. Craig and Morreale will create a statement on the value of getting involved in the review process with agencies, and develop tips on how to do that. This statement would come back to the September meeting so that associations can use it with their members. Each individual association should be doing more to develop lists of reviewers for NSF or NIH grants and get its members involved in this process. Each association can decide for itself how to do this. This will be placed on the agenda in September to follow up on what other associations have been doing in this regard.
Motion: That each association ask members if they had been reviewers for any agency, and if they have received funding from federal agencies, and if so, when and in what areas.
Moved by: Linda Putnam
Seconded by: Martha Watson
Motion passed unanimously
Amendment, to ask people about state-level funding received also.
Approved
Putnam updated the council on the NCR study (Appendix III). The survey has again been postponed. They are still raising the money for this. Now the institutional questionnaire is scheduled for distribution in spring 2006. Program questionnaires will go out summer 2006, and faculty questionnaires in fall 2006. All faculty in each program will be surveyed. Student surveys will be random and will not include every discipline and that will be done in spring 2007. A report is scheduled in September 2007. Putnam will write something on this for the CCA website and each association’s newsletter.
The Task Force continues to nominate communication journals for inclusion in ISI listings (Appendix IV). The group has nominated a total of 25 journals. She recounted the decisions to date. One thing that is happening to kick journals out is that the issues come out late, and another is that they are not international in scope. Another area of weakness is that the number of citations of the journal may be low. ISI only adds a limited number of journals each year. After a journal is rejected, it may not be re-nominated for two years.
Anyone who is interested in working with this project is welcome to join. Both Jon Nussbaum and Bob Craig volunteered for this. Self thanked Putnam and the other task force members for their work on this.
The PhD program list is on the NCA website. We can build a link for the CCA site to that site. We are still working on a way to get the information updated continuously. There needs to be an ongoing mechanism for the list to be updated. This may be a part of the database discussion this afternoon.
The council discussed the new ASCUS online database. Each association recapped its work on online dissemination of its journals. Haley said he was concerned that each association might end up with different contracts with the different vendors. Discussion followed. At the last meeting we talked about working on a list of guidelines for groups looking at this issue. No one has been able to do this yet. Roger Smitter will pull together a list of these. Anyone with ideas can pass these along to him.
Ebsco asked NCA to develop a concept map of the field (Appendix V) for its search and thesaurus functions. The results are a bit uneven now, and NCA would like some help from the other associations in coming up with more terms for their respective areas. The schedule is very open-ended. NCA will feed updates along to Ebsco as it gets these. The concept map will belong to NCA but will be used by Ebsco. Suggestions may be sent to Morreale.
The council then considered a fair use issue as it relates to copyrighted materials for digitally-produced materials. Haley received an email from a member about fair use in a classroom setting (Appendix VI). The member was asking CCA to consider developing a policy statement on this. Discussion followed. If we did something like that it would have to involve lawyers and other experts in copyright. There is a need for something on this issue. Joe Misiewicz offered to ask a faculty member at his school (Ball State) who is was an attorney about how we might develop such guidelines. The group liked this idea. The suggestion was made to bring him to the next meeting to talk about this, or even someone from the library association.
Each association provided a brief update on its current projects and activities.
The council continued a discussion from the last meeting on creation of a discipline-wide database. As outlined before, this database would provide a more cohesive vision of the communication discipline with all of its subcomponents and provide a lot of specific basic data in all areas. As part of this discussion, two researchers who work on data collection for mass communication agreed to speak with the council at this meeting. Dr. Lee Becker and Dr. Tudor Vlad of the University of Georgia gave a presentation about their data collection process for the three surveys they conduct: enrollments, placements and faculty demographics/salaries.
Becker provided a history of the surveys and the type of data he collects. The bulk of his data gathering occurs online, and where possible he gathers the information for different reports on the same questionnaire. It is very cumbersome since there are so many variables. His survey population for two of the surveys is about 360 schools and for the other is about 190 schools. The results of the enrollment and placement surveys are on a website at Georgia. A future project will focus on the number and diversity of doctoral enrollments. He is also looking at conducting an endowed chairs study. Q&A on these studies followed.
The council discussed the cost and possible scope of developing a discipline-wide database. Someone said that there are about 1,200 universities with communication programs, but some schools could have multiple programs. No one had a good idea on what it would cost until there was a clearer definition of what it would involve. The suggestion was made to create this database using the doctoral programs in the field that are already in hand, and perhaps adding masters programs in the field.
The council decided it did want to look at creation of such a database for the doctoral programs, as a place to start. To begin this process, the council will create a group of people from the council who would lead a discussion on this, and perhaps draw other experts from our associations to establish a task force of 7 to 12 people. The task force charge would be to assemble three things for the next meeting: what information is out there already and a literature review; a list of data that groups would like to have; and possible ways to fund such a project. Some suggestions for the task force are Scott Poole of Texas A&M, Tom Hallahan of USC and Peter Orlich of Central Michigan. (Louisa Nielsen will check with Orlick and Roger Smitter will check with Hallahan.) Mary Alice Shaver and Sherry Morreale volunteered to be part of the task force, but not to chair. Becker said he would be happy to share his expertise with the group. The incoming president of CCA will need to follow up and work to set up the task force. Each association should take this to its appropriate group and ask for people to serve on this task force. Send these names to the new CCA president.
The next CCA meeting will be Monday, September 12 in Washington, DC.
The council discussed the next president for the group. Smitter said that Watson had volunteered to serve in this role for the coming year.
Motion: To appoint Martha Watson as CCA president for the coming year.
Moved by: Bob Craig
Seconded by: Roger Smitter
Motion passed unanimously
The council did not elect a vice president but will do so at the fall meeting. A new Executive Director will also need to be named at the fall meeting.
The council then heard from Marsha Vanderford of the Center for Disease Control on ways that communication associations and programs might develop a closer working relationship with the CDC. Most of the past communication with the public has been in an emergency mode.
She said there are many opportunities for working with the CDC on getting the word out to the public. The Center does receive funding proposals for research projects. Proposal calls are listed on the CDC website. There is a need for real-time evaluation and content analysis where communication researchers could play an important role. There is also a need for research on how to shape the public messages to get the strongest response and clearest understanding to health-related issues.
The CDC has established a coalition with NCA and ICA in this area. Perhaps other CCA groups would like to become part of that coalition as opposed to setting up something else with the CDC. NCA is finding a very positive response to its involvement with the CDC.
The meeting adjourned at 3:35 p.m.
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