NCA Annual Convention

Thank you for your tremendous efforts in Philadelphia—we are a members services organization, and we are only as strong as our members make us, so thank you for your insights, energy, laughter, and strong words.

Thank you to all the program planners who worked through so many submissions while helping to assemble our roster of presenters. Thank you to everyone associated with the Social Justice Exchange and the Social Justice Film Festival, and to everyone who helped organize and/or participated in our annual slate of special series, including Scholars' Office Hours, G.I.F.T.S, Short Courses, Teachers on Teaching, Preconferences, Research in Progress Roundtables, Scholar to Scholar, and Seminars. Thanks as well to our Opening Session panelists, our Arnold Lecturer, our “One Pulse” activists, and to everyone who organized and worked in our Graduate Schools Open House, our Interest Group Fair, and our Career Center. Special thanks to the organizers of and participants in our many special sessions on “Communication’s Civic Callings,” and to all the members who took up that theme with such gusto and creativity.

Congratulations to our award winners, who make us all so proud with their sustained excellence!

For another year of rousing democracy-in-action, thanks to everyone on the Legislative Assembly, and thanks to everyone who worked at the business meetings of our many divisions, sections, and caucuses.

For another year of excellent management of the organization’s internal affairs, thanks to everyone on the Executive Committee, to everyone who works so tirelessly in the National Office, and especially to our outgoing President, Christie Beck, who has been a rock of steady leadership.

Thanks to you late-night bar-room debaters, you passing-cards-on-the-stairways connection-makers, you trading-notes-on-the-elevator collaborators, you Big Idea brain-stormers, you already-thinking-ahead-to-next-year advance planners, and to everyone else who helped make our 2016 Convention such a rousing tribute to civic engagement.

Finally, I feel compelled to address the question of community. Both during the convention and since it ended I have had literally hundreds of people comment on what they felt was this year’s sense of community—how we rallied together to try to make sense of the election, how we embraced diversity and inclusion, how we welcomed newcomers and old-timers alike, how we cherished our international friends, and how, throughout it all, we made kindness and generosity key elements within the Big Tent of Communication. Thank you for making this possible, and thank you for making it a baseline expectation for how we all work, study, act, and serve together in the future.

Thanks. Best wishes. See you in Dallas! 

Stephen John Hartnett
NCA First Vice President
University of Colorado Denver