Council of Communication Associations Meeting
October 27, 2003
Washington, DC
Present: ACA — Scott Poole, Texas A&M University; Isa Engleberg, Prince Georges Community College. AEJMC — Jan Dates, Howard University; Eddith Dashiell, Ohio University; Mary Alice Shaver, University of Central Florida; Jennifer McGill, Executive Director. ASJMC — John Soloski, University of Georgia, Charles Self, University of Oklahoma. BCCA — Frank Dexter Brown, Morgan State University. BEA — Alan Albarran, University of North Texas; Steven Anderson, James Madison University; Louisa Nielsen, Executive Director. ICA — Jennings Bryant, University of Alabama; Robert Craig, University of Colorado-Boulder; Linda Putnam, Texas A&M University; Michael Haley, Executive Director. NCA — Judy Pearson, North Dakota State University; Bill Balthrop, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Sherry Morreale, Interim Director for External Affairs.
The meeting was called to order at 8.35 a.m. by President Charles Self, University of Okalahoma. Attendees introduced themselves.
Motion: To approve minutes of the April 2002 meeting.
Moved by: Linda Putnam
Seconded by: Bill Balthrop
Motion passed.
The officers of NCA and ICA met last night to discuss collaborations between the two associations. Linda Putnam and Sherry Morreale reported. The associations are looking at ways to work together to help promote the field to outside bodies. They are looking into international possibilities, ways to suggest topics for congressional briefings and development of a communication mission. The two groups are also attending briefings conducted by the Consortium of Social Science Associations. NCA and ICA belong to CSSA. Haley and Morreale agreed to share information from CSSA and any position openings with the rest of the CCA members.
Scott Poole, chair of the NCA Research Committee, reported that NCA is holding meetings with national funding agencies to simply make them aware of communication as a field. They have been to the social science groups and will be contacting groups from the humanities next. Poole said it was valuable to simply be around and he was able to convey some information about communication to the agencies. Often such groups are looking for people who could serve as reviewers for grant proposals – people with expertise in the grant area. NCA is considering creation of a registry of people who might be able to do that, and then would share this information with other groups. NCA is also exploring creation of a grants and fellowship registry and plans to create a yearly list of these opportunities. He mentioned that if a database of all the CCA groups was created, these are some types of things that should be included. Poole offered to email CCA groups about these items and others that are coming up that might be relevant.
Discussion followed on the creation of a communication directorate at the National Science Foundation. One of the main problems with this is that the foundation needs a guaranteed number of grants and it is a large number. There is a need to foster a routine of grant-getting in the discipline. If a directorate or program is created in NSF, it would create a place for communication proposals to go, which we do not really have now. One of the first steps in doing this is to build credibility with the group and build a presence. One avenue to that presence is to get communication people into jobs at the NSG and similar groups.
Linda Putman suggested that each CCA group provide information on these opportunities to its members on a regular basis, and also have groups provide names of people who could serve as reviewers. It would also be helpful if the names of funders and proposal guidelines could be provided to all communication programs.
Based on the discussion, the following action items were established:
* Create a list from each CCA group of reviewers for NSF proposals (which would be turned into a comprehensive list to give to the appropriate people)
* Coordinate distribution of calls for grants and research briefings to CCA groups
* Create a document about the field as a whole
* Create a comprehensive directory of funders in humanities and social sciences
* Invite program officers from a couple of these groups to talk about ways to work with them to next CCA meeting – Self will work on this.
More discussion on these later in the meeting.
There was general discussion about online publishing options. Two groups will be coming to the meeting later to discuss what each has to offer in these areas: EBSCO and ASCUS. Groups that have already signed agreements reported on their experiences.
Putnam presented an update on the National Research Council’s plans to include communication in the next survey. The NRC has agreed to include communication in the survey, but still needs to locate the funding. The CCA task force is now trying to educate the individual members of each association on what this means. Putnam said the council is optimistic that data collection will begin in fall 2004.
The council has discontinued the questionnaire for past doctoral students as part of the process. They will have a questionnaire for current doctoral students in five of the disciplines, but they have not decided which five disciplines. Institutions will receive a survey that will collect a variety of information, including number of doctoral students and their demographics, and faculty information and their demographics. Later, NRC will send these faculty a reputational survey, which will list around 50 schools in their area and will ask the faculty to evaluate the schools on how well the faculty are known, have they improved or declined in the past five years, etc. It will be a generic type of evaluation.
The rest of the data will be from objective measures. These include number of grants faculty have, number of books published by faculty, national awards and fellowships faculty receive, citation index for publications, etc. There will be no rankings this time. There will be a range of some kind, or some kind of rating like superior, good, etc. The data collected will be provided on CD-ROM to each school that participates so the data will be available for further analysis.
The CCA task force has been working to get the field situated for the NRC survey. The group is working on adding journals in our field to the ISI listings. Currently 70 communication journals are part of ISI. They have identified eight journals that are now being evaluated by ISI. The process will take around a year. The goal is to get as many as possible included.
The task force is also planning to send letters to universities which offer communication doctorates (provosts, vice presidents for graduate studies, and deans of communication) to explain the NRC survey. The letter will only provide background on this and encourage them to begin to get ready. The task force is preparing a list of pros and cons for participating in the NRC process for communication. Each university has to make the choice to participate. It will also talk about ways to handle multiple programs at the same university. Discussion followed on the letters. It is important that the letters go to as many people as possible to make sure everyone stays informed.
The task force will also prepare articles for each association’s newsletter. This will help to keep people informed. Convention sessions are also part of this education process.
Self thanked Putnam and all the members of the task force for their hard work on this process.
Discussion followed on inviting film/cinema associations to join CCA. The membership is open to any communication-related group. McGill was asked to update the CCA brochure.
McGill reported on the CCA transition from NCA to AEJMC. The transition began in June. By mid-July, all the old files had been received and a CCA checking account had been set up in Columbia. The account opened with $6,013. NCA was paid for some CCA expenses it paid while Jim Gaudino served as CCA executive director. The funds now on hand total $3,583, and expected expenses for this meeting will run between $400 and $500. McGill thanked Sherry Morreale and Irene Wang of NCA and Bob Cox of ICA for all their help in sorting through everything.
McGill learned that no forms had been filed with the IRS for several years, so she has now filed all the necessary forms from 1999 to 2002. While no funds were collected during those years, officers and the location of the office changed so forms had to be filed. She does expect to bill for 2003 dues later this fall. The last time dues were collected was in 1998.
Under new business, the council considered a set of financial guidelines for expenditures of CCA funds (Appendix A). Discussion followed.
Motion: To endorse the financial guidelines as presented.
Moved by: Jan Dates
Seconded by: Linda Putnam
Motion passed
The council discussed the dues structure for CCA (Appendix B). These are the dues that were originally adopted by the council. Dues were originally set based on size of the member organization.
Motion: To accept the dues structure as outlined.
Moved by: Bill Balthrop
Seconded by: John Soloski
Motion passed.
The council set up a subcommittee called the Committee for Integrating New Members, which will examine the dues structure and create guidelines for integrating new members into the council. The subcommittee will report at the next meeting. Members are Judy Pearson, John Soloski (chair) and Mary Alice Shaver.
The council discussed the possibility of a baseline data project that would collect a variety of information from each of our groups that would benefit the field as a whole. Discussion followed on what the various groups already gather. NCA gathers what is available nationally and brings it all together on its website. AEJMC and ASJMC support annual studies for enrollment at JMC programs, placement and salaries of JMC graduates, and faculty salary levels. BEA does an annual faculty salary survey, and also collects data on what courses members teach. Discussion continued. Steve Anderson suggested that an online database questionnaire might be a possible solution to gather this information. Actually how this might happen was not decided. The council will continue this discussion later today.
Joe Tragert of EBSCO publishing made a presentation to the group about online publishing of communication journals. Much discussion followed. The group will hear a presentation from ASCUS this afternoon, and more discussion will follow after that.
The council discussed creation of a CCA website. Steve Anderson said he know of some very reasonable hosting alternatives. Following discussion, the council approved putting up a website, and asked McGill to work with Anderson who volunteered to set a website up for the group (domain name and hosting company). He would not be responsible for maintaining the site content.
The group continued discussion on the baseline data project. Discussion continued on the process and content of such a project. The council appointed a small committee to come up with a recommendation on what to include and were to begin. The committee is Jennings Bryant (convener for group), Scott Poole, Sherry Morreale, Alan Albarran and John Soloski. Soloski will serve as a liaison with Lee Becker who already has much of this information for mass communication. The committee should also keep in mind with this project what is unique to each group as well as what needs are in common.The group revisited the action items from this morning.
Action Items:
* Create a list from each CCA group of reviewers for NSF proposals – need to create a proposal for how to do this. Each group will decide for itself how to select the reviewers from its association. A small committee was appointed to look at this and bring back recommendations: Bob Craig (chair), Judy Pearson and Jan Dates. Poole will also stay in touch with the committee since he is in the process of creating a list for NCA.
* Coordinate distribution of calls for grants and research briefings to CCA groups – Morreale volunteered to set up a listserve for CCA and will email these announcements when they come out so they can then be sent out by each association to its own membership. McGill will provide email addresses to her.
* Create a comprehensive directory of funders in humanities and social sciences – Discussion followed. Perhaps ask individual members where they get funds? The suggestion was made to ask this as part of the survey for the baseline data project. Isa Engleberg will work on this. There also should be some criteria for who to include, such as ones that have funded in our field. Morreale offered to go to the Foundation Center to check on gathering this type of information. For a small fee the center will run such a search. She will need some ideas of the keywords to use before she asks them about a special run. Cost will likely be a couple of hundred dollars. The council endorsed this idea.
* Invite program officers from a couple of these groups to the next CCA meeting – Self will work on this. He asked for members to suggest some people.
* Create a document about the field – NCA has already done this as it relates to social sciences and will be developing one related to humanities. Discussion followed about looking at each group’s mission statement and definition of the field. Self and McGill will collect these documents and bring them to the next meeting for discussion.
Tim Stephen of the University of Albany presented information on the online database project that he is working with called ASCUS. It is separate from CIOS, but that group is providing the start up money as a no-interest loan that will be repaid after the system has the money to do so. ASCUS is looking for non-exclusive agreements with journals and will be governed by the societies providing journals to the database. These groups will not receive royalties as such, but will receive portions of any proceeds, after expenses. Stephen provided a variety of details about the plans for ASCUS. Discussion followed.
The council then discussed whether CCA should create some guidelines or list of questions to ask to help associations as they explore these type of arrangements. Mainly what are the key issues involved in the process. There was no support for the council to formally develop guidelines, but there was support for sharing information about the issues involved and questions that might be helpful. Bill Balthrop offered to start a list of questions that groups might find helpful. He will share it with the other NCA officers who were part of this discussion. Then he will share it with other CCA groups.
The group suggested that the next meeting be either March 7-8 or March 14-15, 2004, in Washington, DC (with March 7-8 as the preferred dates). Groups will check with their representatives to see which date works best, and provide this information to Self.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:50 p.m.
**********************************************
Appendix A:
CCA Financial Guidelines
CCA funds may be used for:
Group Meetings:
• Group refreshment/meal expenses during called CCA meetings.
• Meeting room rental
• AV equipment
• Travel for special guests specifically invited to attend by the council
Council Administration
• Conference calls arranged to conduct CCA business
• Mailing and copying expenses
• Letterhead/envelopes
• Supplies
• Filing of appropriate forms for doing business
• Banking/check fees
• Web server space/domain name
• Officer travel if it specifically relates to CCA business (separate from
any called meeting)
CCA funds may NOT be used for:
• Travel expenses for delegates to attend called meetings
• Salaries/stipends for volunteer officers
• Overhead or administration fees for the host association
• Equipment
• Gifts
*******************************************
Appendix B:
Council of Communication Associations
Dues Structure
$1,500
National Communication Association
$750
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
International Communication Association
$350
Broadcast Education Association
$200
Association of Communication Administration
Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication
Black College Communication Association
-30-
communicationassociations.wordpress.com 