The International Communication Division welcomes you to an exciting new academic year, in which it will continue a wide variety of activities to strengthen its division and to accelerate its efforts to internationalize AEJMC and thus help improve journalism education worldwide.

ICD members are truly special individuals. They not only make up one of AEJMC's largest divisions, they are among its most active, respected members. This is why AEJMC's Internationalization Task Force (ITF) has asked our division to spearhead its efforts and to take a major role in leading our organization into the future. As your 2004-05 head, I want to make sure we take full advantage of this rare opportunity.

But I, and my extremely talented Executive Committee, cannot achieve these goals without your active help. Please read the following quick overview of 11 of our key efforts, and sign up to help us on one or more of them. Or, if you have your own ideas on how to best reach our above objectives, let us know them as well.

Unless I state someone else's name under a task, please contact me, and I'll direct you to the appropriate person. Regardless, feel free to contact me ( fgoodman@alfred.edu ) any time with any questions, concerns or feedback.

Thanks so much for getting involved in this year's ICD activities, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Robyn S. Goodman, ICD Head

 

Here's what we're up to:

1. Our division is helping AEJMC's ITF organize a 2007 World Journalism Education Congress that would be hosted abroad and would ideally bring together the world's top journalism and mass communication educators, publishers and professionals from every continent. Although the ITF is waiting for final AEJMC approval, planning for the conference is well under way (see recent International Communication Bulletins ( ICB ) for more details).

If you are interested in helping make this conference a reality, please contact me. The ITF could especially use help identifying and contacting journalism and mass communication AEJMC counterparts in Asia , Africa and South America .

2. We need to continue maintaining and establishing relationships with journals publishing our research, especially those based abroad. Two international journals have established paper competitions with our division, in which the winners are awarded with publication opportunities. These two journals are the Asian-based Asian Journal of Communication and the South African-based Ecquid Novi: South African Journal of Journalism Research .

If you can help us establish additional publishing outlets (at home or abroad) for our members' research, via special ICD paper contests or any other venue, please let me know as soon as possible.

3. Don't forget to keep submitting your own book reviews and research to our division's academic journal, the ICB. Publishing in the ICB is also an excellent way to make sure your articles are read by our membership. For information on the many types of articles the ICB is interested in publishing, contact its editor, Yorgo Pasadeos (pasadeos@apr.ua.edu).

4. Speaking of the ICB , let me know if you have any ideas how to receive more attention for it. The more students and scholars that know about it at home and abroad, the greater the likelihood we will continue   receiving the strongest international research possible.

5. We are working on increasing our division's overall membership, and we are especially targeting graduate students and scholars based abroad. If you are willing to pitch in and help, please contact our Membership Chair, Eliza Tanner Hawkins (eliza.tanner@byu.edu).

6. We are working on establishing a dissertation grant for graduate students researching international communication issues. To help with this effort, contact our Dissertation Grant Chair, Serajul Bhuiyan (Serajul.Bhuiyan@tamut.edu).  

7. We are also trying to establish a Mary Gardner Fund to promote excellence in international journalism education and research. We are still trying to determine whether this fund should be available to students, faculty and/or journalists. If you can help us work on this project, please contact me.

8. Encourage your students to send entries to the International News Writing Contest by its April 1 st deadline. For contest rules and other information, please check out our ICD Web site (http://userpages.umbc.edu/~hasegawa/aejmc-icd/index.html) and/or contact Dr. Sandy Rao ( sr02@swt.rdu ) – the 0 is zero.

  9. Don't forget to submit a research paper to our division by the April 1 st deadline! After all, we need to continue to receive quality work to ensure international communication research is well represented in our organization. Check out our call for papers in the January AEJMC newsletter or our Web site ( http://userpages.umbc.edu/~hasegawa/aejmc-icd/index.html ). If you have research-related questions, please contact our Research Chair, Vandana Pednekar-Magal ( pednekav@gvsu.edu ), or our Markham Paper Competition Chair (student papers), Xigen Li (lixigen@msu.edu).   

10. Please volunteer to serve as a paper reviewer for our paper competitions. Vandana and   Xigen Li would very much appreciate your help and your contacting them ASAP (e-mails above).

11. And last but not least, please do your best to attend the San Antonio conference this August! It promises to have a strong international focus and to be one of our strongest conventions yet.

Thanks once again for volunteering to help out in one or more of the above areas, and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon and seeing you next year in San Antonio !

Robyn S. Goodman (fgoodman@alfred.edu)

CD Head

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