This December, members will be asked to vote in the NCA election. The Nominating Committee and the Leadership Development Committee developed a slate of candidates for the December 2024 election. Members will be asked to elect a Second Vice President, At-Large Representatives of the Legislative Assembly, the Leadership Development Committee, and the Nominating Committee.
Balloting for the election will open on Tuesday, December 3, at 9 a.m. Pacific Time and will close on Tuesday, December 31, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. All active individual members of the Association are eligible to vote in the election, which will be conducted through the NCA website. To vote, you must log in to your NCA account. If you have questions about your account, email them to nomination@natcom.org.
2024 NCA Election Ballot
Second Vice President
One will be elected with a term beginning in January 2025.
- Shaunak Sastry, University of Cincinnati
- Vision Statement
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Colleagues: It is my honor and privilege to be nominated for 2nd Vice President of NCA. I am currently Professor of Communication at the School of Communication, Film & Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati. I am a health communication researcher with research and teaching interests in culture, health, and globalization. My award-winning and internationally recognized program of research has been heralded as broadening and globalizing the study of health communication. I currently serve on NCA’s Executive Committee (EC) as Chair of the Research Council and view this nomination as a next step in an academic career dedicated to serving NCA as a leader, mentor, and member. Even prior to my current leadership position, my wide-ranging experiences with the association include interest group leadership and program planning experience (Asian/Pacific American Caucus and Communication Studies Division, editorial board memberships on four NCA journals (Communication Monographs, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Journal of International and Intercultural Communication), co-author of NCA’s Research Cultivation Grant program proposal, as well as active reviewing, participation, and membership across three interest groups. I hope to bring to NCA leadership the accumulation of my insights and learning from these leadership experiences.
My nomination is undergirded by a deep understanding and appreciation of NCA’s governance and functioning. I recognize NCA’s key stakeholders, both internal and external. I am familiar with its culture and the expectations from its members, its officers, and its legislative body. I am aware that leadership of the association involves competing/ conflictual priorities and that leaders must be the conduit for making conflicts productive. I believe I am uniquely positioned for such leadership. From my vantage point, I understand the call for change (from inside and outside the association). I see that we are viewed as an association that is changing too quickly for some of our members, and not quick enough for others. My role on the EC brings me in contact with those charged with running the association smoothly in a time of flux. I am energized by the ownership and passion of NCA’s members to move NCA forward amidst challenges and obstacles. Above all, I see an organization that has a long and continuing history of surviving, thriving, and leading broader waves of social change.
My goals can be encapsulated by three keywords: demystification, democratization, and professionalization:
- Demystification: NCA’s heterogeneous membership, together with the particularities of our governance structure, internal functioning, and cultural scripts can work to make NCA daunting and even alienating to members. One of my primary goals is to demystify NCA in ways that foster belonging, ownership, and accountability. By this I mean that it is the onus of NCA leaders to offer context, rationale, process, and texture to decisions that are made on behalf of the members. In practice, demystification can look like, but is not limited to:
- Ensuring members have a detailed and regular access to NCA budgets and finances.
- Establishing criteria and metrics for nominated leadership positions, awards, and honors.
- Identifying pipelines for members to participate in interest group, caucus, and NCA decision-making.
- Establishing meaningful evaluation criteria to existing strategic goals, plans, and aspirations.
- Expending resources on crystallizing and standardizing NCA policies and bylaws.
- Democratization: NCA interest group leaders, LA members, and the composition of the EC increasingly resemble the diversity of our membership, and this transformation was the result of collective organizing and advocacy by members. However, as social movement scholars warn us, institutions are by their very nature resistant to transformation, and that representational politics, while acutely necessary, may not be sufficient to ensuring long-term change changes. Ergo, policies of democratization, which may include, but are not limited to:
- Enabling and empowering the Legislative Assembly to act more regularly as a liaison between membership, interest groups and the association leadership.
- Simplify and streamline the process for members to propose resolutions, policy statements, white papers on important issues for educators and researchers.
- Expanding and evaluating NCA’s role in meeting its IDEA strategic plan goals.
- Recognizing NCA’s role as advocacy organization for a wider range of stakeholders than currently represented.
- Expanding on NCA’s role in creating public and community-engaged scholarship in Communication across the convention, NCA journals, and programs.
- Professionalization: I see an urgent need for further professionalization of the association and its offerings. As such, it is imperative that we clearly define how NCA programs, conventions, and resources provide tangible benefits to its members. Recent surveys show that for most members, our convention is synonymous with the association. This is intuitive, but also opens opportunities to expand the professional benefits of an NCA membership. Professionalization for me refers to ideas like:
- Expanding the culture of research professionalization at NCA (e.g. the Research Cultivation Grant Program) and similar program offerings for educators, practitioners and students.
- Building connections from NCA to grant-offering foundations and institutions that see the value of Communication perspectives, and advocacy for those that don’t.
- Medium-term vision thinking and stewardship of our journals to navigate AI challenges, open-data and open science opportunities, editorial and reviewer fatigue, and entrenched equity and access issues.
- Innovating the format and scope of future conventions, building on ongoing work in this area.
- Exploring the role of micro-credentialing and professional development opportunities for non-academic audiences at NCA.
I hope to have impressed upon you my detail-oriented, reflexive, and accountability-driven approach to leadership, and the institutional experience that I bring to this nomination. I bring to this nomination significant expertise in administrative leadership, program development, budgets, and collaborating with diverse set of stakeholders.
Finally, on a personal note, let me share that I bring to this nomination the embodied experience of the time that I was an international graduate student who was socialized and accepted into the discipline of Communication through the mentorship, training, and camaraderie that I received at NCA. Indeed, NCA members, mentors, and colleagues have coalesced into a home in the world. I would cherish the opportunity to provide such offers of community, belonging, and perhaps even, reflections on a home in the world to others. I humbly ask for your support in this endeavor.
Thank you!
Shaunak
- Demystification: NCA’s heterogeneous membership, together with the particularities of our governance structure, internal functioning, and cultural scripts can work to make NCA daunting and even alienating to members. One of my primary goals is to demystify NCA in ways that foster belonging, ownership, and accountability. By this I mean that it is the onus of NCA leaders to offer context, rationale, process, and texture to decisions that are made on behalf of the members. In practice, demystification can look like, but is not limited to:
Legislative Assembly
Three will be elected with a three-year term beginning in January 2025.
- Debbie S. Dougherty, University of Missouri
- Sebastiaan Gorissen, St. Michael's College
- Joshua Guitar, Kean University
- Danielle Hodge, University of Colorado, Boulder
- Rebecca Leach, University of Arkansas
- Aaron Sanchez, Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Leadership Development Committee
Two will be elected with a two-year term beginning in January 2025.
- Clover Baker-Brown, Prince George's Community College
- Sarah Amira de la Garza, Arizona State Unviersity
- Lisa Hanasono, Bowling Green State University
- Seok Kang, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Nominating Committee
Four will be elected with a one-year term beginning in January 2025.
Candidates for the Nominating Committee will be approved at the Legislative Assembly in November.