Council of Communication Associations
March 7, 2011
MINUTES
Attendees:
- American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA)
Fred Blevens, Past President, AJHA, Florida International University - Association for Business Communication (ABC)
Betty Johnson, Executive Director, ABC; Stephen F. Austin University - Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC)
Barbara Hines, Howard University - Black College Communication Association (BCCA)
Jan Dates, Howard University
- Association of Schools of Journalism & Mass Communication (ASJMC)
Paul Parsons, Elon University
- Broadcast Education Association (BEA)
Sam Sauls, Academic VP, University of North Texas (Denton)
Max Utsler, President, BEA, University of Kansas
Heather Birks, (CCA ED) Executive Director, BEA - International Communication Association (ICA)
Patrice M. Buzzanell, (CCA Chair) Past President, ICA, Purdue University
Michael Haley, Executive Director, ICA
- National Communication Association (NCA)
Lynn Turner, President, NCA, Marquette University
- Guests:
- Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Center for Intercultural Dialogue, Micro-Grants Project (Call-in)
- Linda Putnam, University of California, Santa Barbara (Call-in)
- Ed Fink, University of Maryland (Call-in)
Meeting was Called to Order: Patrice Buzzanell, Chair
- Introductions
- Approval of Agenda
- Acceptance of minutes of March 7, 2011
CCA’s Potential 501(c)(3) Status: Patrice Buzzanell and Heather Birks
Heather and Patrice have been working with Brian R. Fons, President and Counsel, Corporate Creations Chicago, LLC to set up a new tax-id number and investigate the possibility and expense of setting up CCA as a 501c3. The cost of establishing CCA as a 501c3 is considerably less than we anticipated.
As a result, Heather worked with Corporate Creations to successfully reinstate CCA with a new tax-id number and will make the appropriate changes with the account at Suntrust Bank.
Brian Fons encouraged CCA to move forward with the 501c3 status. Establishing CCA with the status will promote transparency and accountability. If we plan to continue to pay consultants (ie. reporting on NRC data and any others on a “contract” basis), awarding grants through CID, collecting membership dues, etc. – we need to establish CCA as an organization. 501c3 status is the most appropriate for CCA in general, regardless of the CID.
Rolling the CID under a member association is not recommended if CCA wants the CID to stay with CCA – and not become the responsibility of another organization. The liability should stay with CCA. Heather will proceed with the paperwork to gain the status.
CCA Membership dues have lapsed over the last several years. Heather will proceed with invoices for CCA members. Annual membership dues invoices will be sent in August/September each year and members need to confirm membership dues.
AJHA: $300
ICA: $1,500
NCA: $1,500
BEA: $350
ABC: $300
Need to confirm: AEJMC, ASJMC, BCCA
Action Items: Heather will process confirm 501c3 process with Creative Communications and begin paperwork for 501c3 status. Heather will also create and send out invoices to CCA member organizations.
The Center for Intercultural Dialogue: Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
The CID website created by Wendy works very well as a clearing house. A lot of work was devoted to making the website current and up-to-date. Wendy reports that people are finding this website at an astonishing rate. The new section on researcher profiles of the Advisory Board Members is getting quite a few views. The figures published in the CID’s report CCA are already out of date because of ongoing increase in views. There have been lots of possibilities for funds and dialogue—in particular in Japan and China—as well as in the Middle East, and Wendy requested names of people in Japan, China, and elsewhere for her to visit during her travels. Wendy is not setting up specific connections at this point since there is no documentation of CCA’s corporate/tax status. She might work toward setting up movement of scholars to different universities.
Questions were raised whether a collaborative grant needs an executive committee, entire CCA, or just through CID? —this will depend on tax status. CCA had a discussion on the implications if CCA isn’t the decision maker (501c3) but CID is the executive committee (501c6).
Wendy will send a PR to CCA members (e.g., “Where in the World is Wendy”) and Wendy will provide a link and a schedule of her trips so that CCA members can track and contribute. As of the March 2011 CCA meeting, Wendy is in Lyon, France, and has been to Nice.
In the fall, Wendy sent out a release to all the CCA member associations about Center’s existence. There were 250 views of Center’s site on the same day that NCA posted the release (single highest day). She may send associations something every 6 months, pending resolution of tax status. She will be sending out a brochure—but it won’t be finalized until we know what kind of association CCA is.
Heather noted that Brian Fons indicated that we can start saying that we have tax status as soon as the process is in motion. However, some foundations won’t talk to Wendy until we have a letter with tax number.
Action Items: A motion was approved to give Wendy a one-time gift of appreciation for $1,000. Heather will coordinate with Wendy to make sure she has the support check when she is back in the states.
US News & World Report: Undergraduate School Ratings: Paul Parsons
In the 2010 US News & World Report of Undergraduate School Ratings,
Communication was not one of the fields evaluated in the ratings of undergraduate
programs, such as business and engineering.
A letter was sent to Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at the U.S. News & World
Report, on 10/25/11, to gather information about feasibility of a
CCA initiative.
There were mixed reactions about CCA’s participation at the last fall at the CCA meeting. Morse has said that he has completed work on the next rankings for this year. He wants to talk about what their universe is and their methodology. Because he uses accreditation processes, his preference would be to use journalism and mass communication, and he would like to begin with a known entity of programs. The last time he did this was in 1996. The business and engineering rankings are reputation only. Institutions are based on set of about 15 criteria. He questioned whether anyone would be interested in a reputation survey.
Two issues were raised:
– Would CCA be interested in discussing inclusion journalism and mass communication?
– Would we want to go with reputational survey?
Discussion regarding inclusion in the report included:
– If reputational, there are 12 Carnegie foundation institutions with the option of adding additional institutions. Would we reproduce the same 12 schools? Perhaps the grouping would be the same for journalism and mass communication. If there were other indices besides reputation, then there might be some differences. What if we did a reputational survey with divisions into different types of institutions? It could be ammunition to help gain campus resources.
– Business and engineering are very defined schools – with communication, we would have to specify which programs could be listed (since we are fragmented, universities might need to look anew at how they position departments, courses of studies, etc.)
– How CCA should proceed? Discussion about our field judging you on what you say you are. Reverse of what engineering and business does – or law and medicine. This does not work in our favor on campuses. Our accreditation is not stipulated, powerful, and doesn’t give us leverage. If US News said that they wanted to work with our accreditation agency, we would not be well served, based on AEJMC. Then we need an accrediting agency….
US News will not want to take us on with. Morse met with CCA in 2006 when Jan Dates and Michael Haley met with him. They had a general conversation about how to get more involved with US News & World Report. Morse said that he’d prefer to work with a smaller identifiable subset of a discipline not the whole discipline. He doesn’t work with accrediting bodies but he works with the accreditation.
Easy default is to think we’re all journalism and mass com programs when Colleges of Communication are much more complicated. If we were to proceed the heading would have to be journalism and mass communication but the general public would probably truncate the field to communication. The digest in the letter lists communication as “journalism/mass communication” rather than journalism, mass communication, and related areas.
Several members talked about accrediting body. To simply replicate something based on size. Institutional rankings take into consideration 15 criteria.
ICA is not looking into accreditation because it’s world wide. ABC has similar challenges. NCA is having conversations for what is the center of communication. Why not have broader bodies review regents or other reviews?
If we could create the general parameters of what an ideal program could look like, then we could –what is your mission, how are you accomplishing your mission, do you have sufficient qualified faculty to support your mission …. (umbrella—commonalities… create a document… ABET, NCA Program guidelines). Betty is willing to find.
Not enough of a sentiment to pursue U.S. news rankings for our field. Now that U.S. News has considered that journalism and mass communication exists, then the process might continue without our pursuit and advocacy. ASJMC might want to pursue a heads up in this discussion. If they pursue, they should say journalism and mass communication.
Action Items: CCA will form task force to investigate, possibly develop, standards for our field. Motion. Betty will start it for initial discussion and will need two good people—Fred Blevens and Jan Dates and will provide a September report.
Updates – Patrice Buzzanell and Linda Putnam and Ed Fink
ISI Rankings
Linda Putnam reviewed her report and noted: (a) she needs to have a full committee to move ahead—Rebecca Lind (UIUC, BEA), Linda Steiner (AEJMC, UMD, Barbara Hines will get back to Linda), ICA (Michael will get back to Linda this week); (b) working in tandem (CCA would like to have our ISI committee and publisher on same page with CCA-ISI generating lists and publishers assisting us, all publishers will give stats); (c) Linda will send the list of Cultural Studies journals. Betty will talk to Linda about BCQ.
NRC Doctoral Survey
Committee decided that they and CCA would want to have a white paper. Pulling things together based on background and summary statistics. S scores are more reliable because they correlate more with quality of doctoral programs (research activities/publications and graduate student support). Range Average the low and the high at the ends of the confidence of the intervals and divide by 2 and you’ll get some sense of how a program fares (not subtracting as in report—revised report submitted). If one does this for all 83 programs then you can rank programs from 1-83 that reflects, but is not just the average.
Next stage of project is to try to get descriptors of the programs. Ed went to NRC to provide shadow data (data that is not published on the website). We’d like to classify subfields and provide more information about graduate students. We have quantitative not verbal GRE scores. We want to look further at the dimensions – run an empirical test to see if these three dimensions surface for our field and test them against the a priori dimensions. Then we can split up the 83 programs in different ways (old and new, social science and mixed, large and small).
Scott Poole recalculated the s scores based on humanities publications in his own UIUC department. Recomputed scores based on faculty CVs. UIUC’s rankings would be a little higher in recalculations. NRC was primarily social science.
Ed discussed the Spectra report. NRC made corrections made by their offices rather than programs. Spectra report attempts to correct misconceptions about findings. List of criticisms are at the end of the document.
We would like to look at nonlinear relationships and whether the indicators operate similarly for different communication programs. We can get data on programs but need other data to get at subprograms, faculty specialties, and so on. The hold-up was NRC corrections of data. CCA would like to examine indicators and some other aspects.
Are there other disciplines at the intersection of social sciences and humanities: history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, and other programs? NRC categorized programs as humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences. EED programs were excluded.
The reports will be useful for providing baseline data and profiles of our field. The NRC reports are only indicators but not accurate. The Chronicle article just suggested that the NRC collect data and enable others to run analyses. (e.g., what are the averages in the field for graduate student support). Each item seems to be flawed. Different universities define support, “fully”, and grad student, differently. Our committee goals include providing data and arguments for how data can be interpreted—informed response to administrators.
Task Force on Humanities
Members: Dale Cyphert, Fred Blevens, James Darsey, Charles Self, Linda Putnam, Patrice Buzzanell and Heather Birks
Grid of indicators for quality from multiple sources. The task force has contacted librarian associations for their citation indicators and provided updates on Sage Open and Oxford reference and focus group findings from our CCA meeting and NCA.
January 2010 Com Ed—citation patterns (Tim Levine). H scores, impact, Google scholar….is a much better indicator of our field. We need something beyond ISI indicators.
What are CCA associations member make-up?
-ICA is maybe around 70% social sciences
-NCA might be higher in humanities;
-ABC is 60% business (social science) and 40% non-business probably social science.
-BEA has many members with a production and practice base – but for the research humanities, social science.
-AJHA is humanities heavy.
-AEJMC—50-50%.
Thomson Reuters Book Citation Index
We are excited to announce that Edward Elgar Publishing is one of the first publishers to agree to include book titles in the new Thomson Reuters Book Citation Index. Here is an article from ‘Information Today’ that gives more information about the Book Citation Index: http://goo.gl/PPyIT
Historically only leading journals and conference proceedings have been included in the citation index which is accessed through the Thomson Reuters’ Web of Knowledge research platform by 20 million users across 3,800 research institutions in 90 countries.
We expect that this initiative will increase the visibility of Elgar books and help to ensure that citations to your work in our books is fully recognized.
The Book Citation Index is due to launch in late 2011 and we have already submitted all our electronic book files back to 2007 for their consideration. Reprinted material, textbooks and reference works such as dictionaries will not be included however we expect all of our Research Handbooks, authored monographs and original edited collections to be.
The new Thomson Reuters Citation Index represents a real opportunity for book authors and contributors to demonstrate the value of a high quality research book. It is essential that you cite your books immediately in order to maximize their impact.
Roundtable Discussion on Members Activities/News
BCCA – Jan Dates
Working on greater engagement by institutions, working on graduate student development. Jan Dates is stepping down as dean at Howard but she will serve on BCCA in the meantime.
BEA – Heather Birks, Max Utsler, and Sam Sauls
BEA convention in 35 days. First year BEA’s convention is totally co-located with NAB Show in Las Vegas, for a prime spot with great exposure. Took over Bayliss Foundation and created a new scholarship with the funds – they are trying to figure out how to build endowment. Syllabus Exchange (partnership with Poynter/News U) is healthy and growing. Launched new website in the fall, Festival of Media Arts (received a record 941 entries this year). Heather is using Avectra for BEA’s website and membership database.
AEJMC – Barbara Hines
Second year giving scholarships to emerging scholars at the convention – each award is $2,500 for research grant and travel money. 47 proposals were received with a couple of rounds of judging and reviewers. Have been selecting 4 per year but it depends on funds. 2012 in Chicago will kick-off AEJMC’s centennial year and will run until 2013 in DC. A centennial committee is in place to produce history, special logo and publication issue. The August convention is in St. Louis. Membership is around 3700. Summits on different topics are being held around the United States to look at the future of journalism. The Summits will be 1/2 day sessions or 1 full day, and will bring industry folks to come in and talk about the changing field Paul added that there were a number of different specialties represented and discussions in “idea summit.” Two new interest groups— Sports communication and Political Communication.
ASJMC – Paul Parsons
Only schools of J and MCOM. More professional, practice-oriented, association. Held conference in Dallas with the Idea Summit – hosted the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge (9 Challenge Grants, Open Source Software funded recipients). Funding for new and interesting ideas – a total of $180,000. Doesn’t want anyone to own (hence, open source) database. Will make an announcement to faculty members that can have an academic or campus media twist. Building in contemporary leadership issues into their revised website—these issues could be budget, accreditation, or other issues. Involved in World Journalism Education Congress – WJEC is holding a planning meeting to discuss WJEC3 at IAMCR—International Association of Media and Communication Research, in July 2011. Association invites development officers. Beth Barnes, U of Kentucky, followed by Peggy Coor, dean at U of Montana, are upcoming one year Presidents.
ABC – Betty Johnson
ABC is celebrating its 75th anniversary with its Chicago conference. They produced a book that summarized the association history, focusing on the last 25 years, as did the 50th anniversary book. When in they are in Honolulu for the 2012 conference, the association’s president will be from Asia. ABC is currently looking for a new Executive Director – but Betty will be at CCA meeting in September. Will be launching new website at the end of March. They are giving travel scholarships for graduate students (they awarded 4 last year), and Betty is working on an endowment to fund graduate research.
ICA – Michael Haley
ICA’s 2011 conference is in Boston and the hotel has sold out as of today. New things at this year’s conference – virtual overlay – cross of 7 sessions being beamed live across the web but there also will be a static part. A respondent will post comments before virtual conference opens. These papers will be uploaded for 3 weeks. Members are not getting that there are 3 different things—virtual, poster, and Boston conference. They are listed in the program and each went through the peer review process. The program chair for each division decided on where the paper would be slotted (e.g., tv show research could have links in the virtual environment). Michael will send all of us links so that we can all access virtual conference. They will be available around May 20-June 10 – with 225 papers listed. There will be wireless in every room – cost is $50,000. Old model to have internet as revenue item. 30% increase in submissions over the Chicago conference from a couple years ago. Boston conference closing plenary is Noam Chomsky.
Working on the website.—trying to come up with a design – no one knows where to find information or get things. They are hoping for approval of a new position – Communication Director (not a press officer). Recommendation is not to have someone based in the US.
There will be a new interest group to be launched in Boston – Environmental Communication. ICA will decide whether they can make political statements. They are going to revisit the awards process. Give out 12 but only 3 are viable—only young scholar, Book, and one other are viable.
ICA imagines no exhibit hall in 5 years since young scholars and graduate students said that they don’t even go to the book exhibits. Associations have lost exhibitors – and ICA hopes the virtual conference will be a place for exhibitors. Exhibitors make money but not a huge portion any more. T&F focus group at NCA—younger scholars admitted that the first place we go is Google. If they can’t find it online, then they won’t use it.
Acquisitions process is still happening. Need to create conversation area to show student or scholars how to work through the proposal process. Most are premade appointments. Acquisitions folks are rarely those at the booths.
NCA – Lynn Turner
5,500 people at the convention in San Francisco. Ongoing discussion about politically sensitive sites. 3-years to 100th anniversary in Chicago. Have done a retooling of publications like Spectra (features and job directory). Interesting generational divide about ongoing migration of materials into internet spaces.
No new interest groups – with a 2-3 year moratorium on new interest groups. NCA is reconsidering structure. Experimented with virtual aspects—webcast of 3 evening lectures with new State of the Discipline address in addition to Arnold and Presidential lecture.
AJHA—Fred Blevens
AJHA’s conference in Arizona went well and happened to co-occur for four days of an International Food Festival. Awards nominations—some are doing well and some are not. They will be giving a Dean Award to a dean each year for favoring history. Discussion about accreditation.
Update on ABComS –Patrice Buzzanell and Heather Birks
T&F’s Kath Burton and Concetta Seminara met with a focus group of faculty and students at NCA in San Francisco. They were going to slightly alter the direction of ABComS after hearing constructive feedback. Patrice and Heather are set to meet with Kath and Concetta at ICA to discuss outcome of NCA meetings. New Business
ISSC is affiliated with UNESCO and is big in Europe (Wendy. Affiliation?)
http://www.worldsocialscience.org/?page_id=10
NSF earned doctorates report (sent to all in December 2010)
NCA list of Doctoral Programs
Adjourn meeting by 2:30 pm.
Next meeting is on Monday, September 12, 2011
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