Regional Associations Update
ECA 2019 Convention Update
By Katherine S. Thweatt, Vice President
The 110th Eastern Communication Association convention in Providence, Rhode Island, will take place April 10-14, 2019. The planning team is working hard to create an excellent conference experience for you and to find opportunities for enjoying Providence.
Providence envisions its future as the Creative Capital. Thus, it is fitting that our 2019 conference theme is “Creating our Future.” I am asking members of our field to work toward Creating our Future by working within local communities to use our knowledge and skill set to create a better future for individuals. To help achieve this goal, the theme for the First Vice President-Sponsored Panels is Community Impact. Jennifer Waldeck is the Director of Community Impact and will be coordinating the sponsored panels.
My vision is that we will build a future in which we use our resources to influence our immediate environments to create better education, to create an understanding of relationships and how to make relationships successful, to create organizational communication that is efficient and profit- or service-driven, and to create health care communication to increase patient quality of life and provider job satisfaction.
In addition to attending the conference, you are invited to enjoy the many exciting aspects of Providence. Providence has a thriving food scene, with a highly active food truck community. Second Vice President Julie Volkman is working with the convention bureau to bring the food trucks to the Omni Providence hotel. I also invite our membership to enjoy the beautiful walkways of Providence and perhaps to take a gondola ride when taking a break during the conference. When walking around Providence, don’t forget to look up! There are amazing murals everywhere you look.
Another bit of exciting news is that we will be using Attendee Interactive to manage submissions and reviews. More information will be provided as we work with Attendee Interactive to develop a platform customized to meet our needs.
Finally, I would like to invite all attendees to say hello to me so that I can thank you for your attendance and participation. Please introduce yourself if we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting. Make sure to visit the Interest Group webpages for calls to see which call is calling your name!
WSCA 2019 Convention Speakers Announced
The keynote speaker for the 2019 WSCA convention on “Advocating with Evidence” will be Natasha Jankowski, Ph.D. Jankowski serves as Director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes (NILOA) and is a research assistant professor with the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is co-author of Degrees that Matter: Moving Higher Education to a Learning Systems Paradigm (Stylus, 2017) and Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 2015), as well as numerous publications and presentations. Her research interests include assessment and evaluation, organizational evidence use, and evidence-based storytelling. Jankowski holds a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Illinois. She previously worked for GEAR UP Learning Centers at Western Michigan University and worked with the Office of Community College Research and Leadership studying community colleges and public policy.
This year’s convention will also feature kick-off speaker David Domke, Ph.D. Domke is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. He worked as a journalist for several newspapers in the 1980s and early 1990s, including the Orange County Register and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, before earning a Ph.D. in 1996. Domke is the author of two books, and his research and teaching focus on issues of racial and religious identity in American politics. In the past two years, he has begun to lead week-long civil rights pilgrimages of students and community adults to the southern United States.