NCA Inside & Out

WSCA 2019 Convention Theme Announced
Advocating with Evidence

Submitted by Rodney Reynolds, WSCA President-Elect

Persuasion and advocacy are critical components of personal, social, and civic action. The focus on advocacy for WSCA’s 2019 convention is to call us collectively toward our foundations of standing up for specific causes. When citizens fail to advocate and deliberate, relationships, organizations, and our society swiftly falter toward vapid messages surrounded by automaticity. Thus, there is fertile ground for papers on the decline of advocacy in our culture over recent decades as much as the pull toward excellence in public discourse. Every interest group within WSCA has compelling scholarly claims as to how we advocate for our students and our profession, where we vest our concerns, and particularly how we pull together toward societal ethics. There is a clear need for more research on the strategies and tactics of persuasion. The hope here is that we will collectively inspire a renewed passion for the study of and education about responsible advocacy.

Advocacy without evidence is a particular concern for us. There is increasing concern that the failing of discourse is directly tied to the separation of the demands for evidence from the positions advocated. Thus, all conference attendees should feel invited to integrate the importance of evidence in responsible advocacy. No doubt, we have many perspectives and interpretations (and even criticisms) of the theme of “advocating with evidence” for our research, teaching, and communication consulting. All approaches to this theme are welcome.

The conference will be held February 22–25, 2019, in Seattle, Washington. The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2018 (except for Undergraduate Scholars Research Conference submissions, which are due December 1). For more details on the conference and submission process, please visit westcomm dot org.