Category Archives: Officers

A Word From the Chair

In the History Division we have been hard at work putting together programming for the 2022 convention in Detroit. A big thank you to all of our members who submitted panel proposals for the upcoming national convention. Our Vice Chair Dr. Madeleine Liseblad (California State-Long Beach) is currently working on finalizing that programming with AEJMC, and those who submitted panels should hear back from the division in early 2022.

Members are what make the History Division such a strong unit within AEJMC. However, some of our members may not have received their membership renewal notifications this year. If you have not received your renewal notification, or are unsure of your membership status, please reach out to AEJMC membership directly.

There is a lot going on in History Division. Of particular note is Dr. Terri Finneman’s (Kansas) update on the new submission guidelines for Journalism History, which we believe will provide a greater opportunity for more submissions. As always, there’s exciting podcast recommendations, member news, and profiles.

Finally, many of our members mourn the loss of the legendary scholar-mentor-teacher Dr. Donald Shaw (North Carolina) who passed away on October 19, 2021. Dr. Bradley Hamm (Northwestern) has written a remembrance of Dr. Shaw and the significant role he played in the field of communication and, more importantly, his impact on his many students.

Once again, thank you to all of our members for your continued support of the division. If there is anything that the division leadership can assist with, please do not hesitate to contact us.

– Cayce Myers

Check in from the chair, July 2021

Hi folks!

I hope that your summers are off to a good start, and that we can all catch our collective breath a bit.

It almost goes without saying that summers still mean work for scholars, and even in a pandemic-recovery season, that includes catching up on much-needed research, service, reading, writing and even getting in some extra teaching. Our community continues to impress me in its resilience, resolve and grace with all these endeavors. Recently, I was on a road trip to see my mom in Seattle and got a chance to meet (safely!) with a few of our members. I’ll just say this: you rock.

A couple of quick reminders before I proceed: I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you to please renew your membership if you haven’t done so yet, and to please register for the conference. It is online, Aug. 4-7, with our awards gala the night of Aug 3, at 7 p.m.; our general membership meeting is at 8:45 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 5. Registration remains just $69 for regular members and $39 for student members, before July 23.

Cayce, Maddie, myself and the rest of the leadership team are excited for what we have in store, but we are also aware that we’re all more than a little Zoomed out, and so I can promise a straightforward experience, with an emphasis on breaks and starting/stopping at reasonable hours, as far as possible.

As this is my penultimate column—past chair Erika Pribanic-Smith will have a *final* word from me in our wonderful conference guide, which she is again graciously producing for us and which will be available in July, ahead of the conference—I just wanted to say a brief word of thanks for all the hardworking volunteers who have reviewed, signed on as moderators and discussants, served on committees, helped with initiatives, wrote emails, posted to our social-media channels, answered my often-tiresome queries and generally selflessly gave of themselves. Thank you!

We have continued a number of important efforts from last year, despite the pandemic, including our mentorship program, our teaching competition, our inclusion of grad students, our web site’s revamp, our various new awards, our journal’s healthy relationship with Taylor & Francis, and, of course, our awesome podcast, among other projects and programs. My time as chair has focused on supporting you during the pandemic in as many concrete ways as possible, and I hope I have succeeded in that. I have again realized my (many!) limitations, but you continue to inspire me.

We’ll be honoring a number of you at the conference with specific shoutouts, but I wanted to specifically recognize both Maddie and Cayce, for all their help, in matters large and small, throughout the year. They’ll do wonderful work as your new vice chair and chair, respectively.

I am filled with optimism and gratitude that the division will be in truly capable hands next year and beyond, and I am increasingly confident that we will be able to return in person, as well, to Detroit.

Finally, I’m grateful for our immediate past chair Teri Finneman’s encouragement and advice—she has acted as liaison for our journal, but has also been a critical sounding board for me and your other division leaders—thank you!

Look for more conference-specific highlights from me in my final column in the conference guide, which we’ll post to social media and to our listserv, but see other updates on our site, https://mediahistorydivision.com/, and again on @AEJHistory Twitter and our Facebook page.

Please reach out to me at wmari1@lsu.edu, wtmari@gmail.com, or @willthewordguy, if you need anything, or just want to say “hi” as I wrap up my time as your division head.

It has been my great honor to have been your chair. Keep up the great work—#mediahistorymatters.

Check in from the chair, June 2021

By Will Mari

Hi again, everyone,

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely still in recovery mode, post-semester (though I am rooting for our friends still wrapping things up on the quarter system!).

I have been humbled by my limitations over the past year, but especially over the past month or so. Please know I deeply appreciate of you all and your resiliency and community.

I just wanted to check in to encourage you to please renew your membership and register for the conference, if you have not done so—our draft schedule is also out, thanks to the hard work of Maddie and Cayce. We will be following up closer the conference with more details. Thank you to all those who submitted, reviewed or have otherwise volunteered to help.

As a reminder, the conference is online, from Aug. 4-7—though don’t forget that our awards gala will be on the night of Aug 3, at 7 p.m. We’d love to see you at the general membership meeting at 8:45 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 5. Registration is till only $69 for regular members and $39 for student members, as long as you sign up before July 23. I’m looking forward to a great conference, and hopefully to next year back in person in Detroit.

A few other quick reminders:

We’ll continue to update you via the listserv, @AEJHistory Twitter and the History Division Facebook page, as well as our new site: https://mediahistorydivision.com/; please know your leadership team is working hard behind the scenes, for you all.

Feel free to drop me a line at wmari1@lsu.edu, wtmari@gmail.com, or @willthewordguy, if you have any questions or just wanted to say “hi.” Take care—#mediahistorymatters.

Check in from the chair, May 2021

By Will Mari

Hi folks,

This is just a brief check-in note as we finish up spring semester (and soon, spring quarter, for those on that system!)—good luck to everyone. It’s been an exceptionally trying, tiring year, but the continuing vaccine news is helping make things brighter, and we’re looking forward to our summer conference. It is online, and will last from Aug. 4-7 (with our awards gala on the night before, on Aug. 3!).

If you haven’t had a chance to, check out the conference site and make sure to register: http://aejmc.org/events/virtual21/. Registration is very affordable this year, at $69 for regular members and $39 for student members, before July 23. If you haven’t renewed your membership, please do so soon—Cayce, Maddie and I are working hard to make sure the conference provides a great mix of scholarship and support for our community. The division’s annual business meeting will take place during the conference, as well—standby for more info on our programming this summer as we finish the paper competition and set the rest of our schedule.

Speaking of which, thank you to all those who have served on a committee, who have worked as a judge or reviewer, or have otherwise supported the division over this past academic year. We literally could not have done this work without you. As we finish the paper-selection process, I should spotlight once more the great work that Maddie Liseblad has done for us, with organizing that part of the conference in her role as research chair.

As I look to pass the baton to Cayce, and finishing my time as chair in August, I’ll be working on my remaining chair goals. Those include outreach to our international partners, including at ICA’s Communication History division. I’ll hope to see some of you at their conference later in May.

Please be thinking ahead to our sibling organization, the American Journalism Historians’ Association, and their call for papers, panels, and research-in-progress abstracts, due on June 15: https://ajha.wildapricot.org/2021_Paper_Call. Especially if you could not submit something to our conference, they are a really fine group of friends and colleagues, so please check them out.

Finally, a huge shout-out is due to Keith Greenwood, for his work on getting our new site up and running: http://mediahistorydivision.com/. We’ll be working on transferring more content over, and the old site should still work for a while, but the new one, as approved by the division last year, is much more secure (definitely something that’s been an issue lately with other nonprofit pages), easier to update and will allow for more continuity, between leadership teams. 

Please keep an eye out for more award announcements on our @AEJHistory Twitter and History Division Facebook page, as well as to that revamped site.

#Mediahistorymatters and so does your work. Please check in with me at wmari1@lsu.edu, wtmari@gmail.com, or @willthewordguy, if you need anything or have any questions or suggestions.


Check in from the chair

Hi everyone,

My social-media feeds are filled with hope, for once, as friends and family not only start to get their vaccines, but finish their second doses, and more folks become eligible every day. Even though our 2021 conference is virtual, I am also feeling increasingly confident that we’ll be in Detroit next year and back to a new kind of normal by the end of this fall.

But there have been some really ugly events over the past couple of months that we as media historians need to meditate on and respond to. The first is the racist attack in Atlanta that killed eight people, include six Asian Americans. Your division leadership denounces this senseless violence and we affirm the life and dignity of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), many of whom we count as valued colleagues and friends. For more on how to help proactively, check out groups like Stop AAPI Hate and AAPI Women Lead.

The past year has been full of violence, from the murder of George Floyd last summer to the Jan. 6 attach on the U.S. Capitol and the shooting (last week as I write this) in Boulder, Colorado. It can be hard to know what to do, as scholars. We can and should roundly condemn these acts of violence and repression, but we should then use our classrooms and our scholarship to confront the endemic issues that cause them.

I had an opportunity to talk briefly about this with Dr. Rachel Grant, an assistant professor at the University of Florida, and our Clio newsletter editor, who does vital research on race, social movements, social justice, and Black feminism, often through a media-historian’s lens. She encouraged me to call on the allies of Black and Indigenous people, along with other historically underrepresented groups, to stand with and support them.

Having courageous conversations with students in the classroom, whether it be via Zoom, a hybrid format, or in person, is a lot easier to write about than to do. While I try to foster a dynamic, healthy space for hard topics, like the baked-in history of racism in American institutions like journalism or the military, I of course fall short. I don’t always know what to say, how to create a safe space for conversation, or how to help students discuss these topics when confronting institutional racism makes me uncomfortable as well.  

But just because it’s hard or awkward doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. I encourage our members to engage head on with current events, using the crucial context of history. We have some good resources on our division page (and that will migrate to our new site), but other sites and organizations that might help with teaching the media history of systematic racism include Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, the Organization for American Historians, and Blackpast.org. 

Finally, I would also urge you to read, cite and teach the work of our own members – especially members from historically underrepresented groups – who study these issues.

With our conference, I am hoping for a good showing of research on issues and representation, and want to thank our reviewers for their help, in advance. This column may not appear before the deadline, but I also want to thank those who submitted their work this year amidst really trying circumstances. I also wanted to encourage you, too, that if you just did not have the bandwidth to do so, to please continue your membership and to submit next year.

Please reach out to our research chair, Dr. Maddie Liseblad, at maddie madeleine.liseblad@mtsu.edu, if you have a question about the paper competition (or just to thank her for all she does!).

We will have more information on our conference programming once we get through the judging process, but Cayce and I are excited about we already have in store. We’ll be in touch with further details as we get them.

Don’t forget to join our more secure, revamped Facebook group, “History Division,” if you haven’t had the chance to do so.

Please reach out to me at wmari1@lsu.edu, wtmari@gmail.com, or @willthewordguy, on Twitter, if you need anything or have any questions or suggestions.

#mediahistorymatters and so do you—please continue to stay safe, and we’ll be in touch again soon.

Check in from the chair, March 2021

By Will Mari

Hi again, folks!

Now that we know our conference format—online—for the summer, I wanted to check in briefly.

Please look at our paper call (which also has info on abstracts), and let Maddie know if you have questions—please also consider being a reviewer. You can learn more and sign up via our site, here. We need a good group of folks this year, especially with those abstracts.

We’ll be getting more updates from big AEJMC about the platform used to host the presentations, as well as on pricing, soon. Cayce, Maddie and I have continued planning for a variety of aspects of the conference, and we’re getting excited about the range of panels, papers and activities that we have in store. We’ll be reaching out to some of you in the next few weeks and months as we head into the spring soon, too.

Speaking of the conference, we had to make the hard decision to not have a preconference this year—I want us to conserve our resources and to focus on making the primary conference great. As I told our executive committee, Dr. Shearon Roberts was incredibly generous to have organized permission to use the physical space at Xavier for free. Thank you! But with things now virtual, and since we did not get much interest, but also in the interest of reducing burdens on our members, we’ll save that idea for another time, perhaps under Cayce and Maddie. 

I wanted to share some good news about our site: thanks to the hard work of Keith Greenwood, our webmaster, we’ve secured mediahistorydivision.com and .org. He’s hard at work at starting the transfer of material from our old site, and that should be done sometime later next month, before our next issue of ‘Clio.’ We’ll not lose our archives or content from the old page, but the new one will be a lot easier to update, navigate and use—stay tuned for more update there. This is something we voted on last year, but have been working on behind the scenes since.


Please let me know if you have any questions, and don’t hesitate to contact me at wmari1@lsu.edu, wtmari@gmail.com, or @willthewordguy, on Twitter. Take care!

Check in from the chair

By Will Mari

Hi folks!

I hope you’re surviving everything—with the new year, and vaccines, it seems like things are, hopefully, finally, slowly … turning a corner. At least, I’ve crossed all my fingers, toes and dog-eared all my pages, to that effect.

I just wanted to give you a brief update on how we’re doing as a division.

First, we’ll find out soon from big AEJMC (probably not long after this goes to print, so to speak), what kind of conference we’ll have this summer. Regardless of whether it’s hybrid in New Orleans or fully virtual, please rest assured that Cayce, Maddie and I have already been planning on several eventualities, and we will be in touch with more information as we get it.

Next, if you haven’t yet, please check out our paper call, and let Maddie or I know if you have questions. Note that we have extended abstracts again as an option this year, with some expanded guidance from the Council of Divisions.

Also, don’t forget the Hazel Dicken-Garcia Master’s Thesis Award, the Covert Award for best mass comm history article or essay, our Donald Shaw Senior Scholar Award, and our teaching award, named in honor of Dr. Jinx Broussard. Please let Amber Roessner, our teaching chair, know if you have questions about the latter. We’d really love to have some great submissions this year, including any and all Zoom/remote-teaching survival ideas. More information about these awards and other calls can be found on our site.

Speaking of our site, we’re working with Keith Greenwood, our webmaster, on updating that this spring, as discussed during our business meeting last year. He’s working on securing our new URL, and we’ll update you as we get more info.

Also, we’ll make a final-final decision soon about a preconference, once we know about the primary conference, but I’d still love your input on that idea. Even if it’s something we do next year, or later, I really believe that it can offer value to our membership and foster our community of scholars and teachers in healthy ways.

Speaking of chair goals, I can report that I’ve been increasing our connections with our international media-history sibling organizations, including the Comm History Division of the International Communication Association, the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) and the Communication History Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).

I recently attended a very early morning meeting (at least for me!) of the ECREA, and they’re particularly excited to join us in future initiatives. A number of our members, including Susan Keith, Elisabeth Fondren and Carole O’Reilly, are already involved in this and other groups. Internalization of media history, especially from the U.S. side outwards, will continue to be one of my primary goals as chair and something I hope to work on as a past chair.

We had a good group of submissions into the SE Colloquium, and I should thank Denise Hill and Anthony Hatcher, along with our reviewers, for their help there.

Finally, I know things continue to be uncertain out there, and so I also wanted to thank you, our members, for holding the line and working hard to continue both the teaching of, and research into, the media history that’s so important for understanding this fraught moment.

Please let me know if there’s anything concrete I can do for you. You can reach me at wmari1@lsu.edu, wtmari@gmail.com, or @willthewordguy, on Twitter.

#mediahistorymatters and so do you—stay safe and we’ll be in touch.

Minutes of AEJMC History Division 2020, Virtual Conference

2020 History Division Business Meeting

Friday, Aug. 7: Virtual

6:45 p.m. PT/7:45 p.m. MT/8:45 p.m. CT/9:45 p.m. ET

Minutes of AEJMC History Division 2020, Virtual Conference

Chair Teri Finneman called the meeting to order. 

Finneman gave an overview of the year’s accomplishments, which can be found in the annual report. She gave special recognition to Brian Creech for his fast turnaround from an in-person to virtual conference in March for the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference and noted the success of a summer Zoom graduate student social.

Throughout 2019-20, she noted that 48 people were involved in some kind of division position and 110 people were featured in Clio. The division membership sits at 291, with 29 of them students.

Finneman reported the History Division was the only AEJMC division to gain members this year, which is a huge accomplishment for history, and shared the annual DIG report indicating other major divisions saw significant membership declines.

Taking into consideration divisions, commissions and interest groups, only Sports Comm (interest group) gained more members (28) compared to History (24). Participatory Journalism gained 13 and small programs gained 1. All other commissions and interest groups saw membership losses.

Finneman noted the division is positioned extremely well in case there are drop-offs due to the pandemic.

Finneman also gave service recognition to the following members moving out of positions: Kristin Gustafson, Melita Garza, Robby Byrd, Terry Lueck, Sheila Webb, Kate Edenborg, Earnest Perry.

Finneman also provided a financial report, noting that the numbers are approximates due to waiting on several billings. The division’s balance is about $38,000 while the journal should end 2020 with around $15,000. Conference expenses this year were $2,282: $520 for plaques, $37 for certificates (designed by Erika Pribanic-Smith and mailed by Finneman) and $1,725 for award checks. She noted that the division is sitting extremely well financially ahead of the pandemic.

Discussing action items, Finneman noted that she and webmaster Keith Greenwood wanted to propose establishing a new website for the division. The current site is tied to AEJMC, which has a dated system that doesn’t allow us to make basic modern improvements like adding in our podcast feed or uploading our experts list. With the move to electronic communication and the updates that Finneman and Greenwood made in the past year, the website also has seen a substantial increase in traffic from 269 monthly visitors in August 2018 to 836 visitors in May 2020.

In a submitted report, Greenwood proposed the division pay a small fee each year to launch a new website that better services the division.

  • Terry Lueck made a motion, Dale Cressman seconded, to create new domain name for the AEJMC History Division

Members then discussed the domain name change. Finneman noted there is also a potential issue since AEJMC may change its name, so the division does not want a site that is tied to old name just in case. Greenwood and the board will discuss potential names for the site to communicate to the membership. 43 members voted in favor of the change, with no opposition.

Finneman gave a journal report from Taylor and Francis.

  • 2900 article downloads 2020 YTD
  • Texas A&M, Toronto, Penn State top download institutions
  • Submissions 26 in 2019, 27 to date July 2020
  • Journal has a 40 percent acceptance rate
  • Refereed decisions in 90 days or less
  • It was noted that Journalism History has U.S. heavy submissions.  Readership is more international from Canada, Hong Kong, Greece, India Cyprus.
  • International media is important since we have high European readership, but low submissions from Europe.

Finneman discussed signing up for journal alerts so that members can receive emails when new content is available.

Journalism History Update:  Greg Borchard and Pam Parry

Greg Borchard thanked everyone for their contribution. He noted that a lot has changed since last year’s business meeting. Much of the plans fell into place for the journal and many of the people helped within the division. Diverse submissions outside of pure “journalism history.” He also noted there was a smooth transition from him to Pam Parry.

Pam Parry: Parry thanked the Publication Committee. Parry noted that she has a philosophy coming in as an outside person to first “do no harm.” She wants to to recruit heavily from the conference and create buzz about the journal. She noted that she invited 500 people to like the journal’s Facebook page, and 100 people did. She also noted that the board of the Stars and Stripes Museum provided a notice about the journal. She said she is very honored take on the journal. 

Website Update: Pribanic-Smith

Pribanic-Smith noted that there is content related to the journal and books reviewed in the journal. There is new content including podcasts going forward. Views have come from 109 countries, with the following top 5: U.S., UK, Canada, Germany and Spain. She noted there is a paper call for the upcoming essay series about the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

Finneman: Podcast. Finneman noted there were 1,800 downloads of the podcast in the last 30 days, with about 11,000 downloads to date. Great worldwide downloads. She again encouraged members to use the podcast in their classrooms

Book reviews: Finneman noted that she and Garza had discussed the backlog in getting book reviews into the journal. There are so many that it’s taking many months to get them published, which is problematic for both the book author and the reviewer for tenure packet purposes.

Finneman discussed the various scenarios of how to handle this problem, ranging from leave it as is to moving all of the book reviews online to our own Journalism History website where they can be published much more quickly. There was also discussion of having short abstracts of the reviews in the printed journal that then refer to the website to read the whole review.

After discussion, there is now a new plan to pull book reviews from the printed journal and place them on our own Journalism History website managed by Pribanic-Smith, with Parry able to use a few journal pages to refer to them online. This will allow for publishing in real time and open public access. Members also discussed having a more formal look to the reviews, and Pribanic-Smith mentioned the possibility of having a PDF version of the review on the website that has a more formal look. Members agreed to move forward, and a committee will meet to work out the details of moving forward with publishing our own book reviews on our own website.

AEJMC 2020 Conference Update:  Finneman

The division conference statistics were as follows:

47 papers submitted total

19 of which submitted by students

49 judges

Accepted 23 papers overall, or 49 percent, which broke down as:

— 14 of 28 faculty papers (50 percent)

— 9 of 19 student papers (47 percent)

Conference Feedback Provided by Members: 

A member noted programming has been good and timely. Commendation for Finneman and Mari.

A member noted engagement session has been fantastic, and attendance and chats have been fantastic. 

A member noted that they missed the one on one.  Gotten more out of the session because it’s about the research. 

A member noted they liked the idea and listen[ed] to the sessions. 

Amber Roessner noted frustration over research and support for abstract submissions.

The division did not need to vote on a new city for a future conference since San Francisco will automatically be the host site in 2025.

Research Awards:

First-Place Faculty Paper: Natascha Roelsgaard and Mike Sweeney

First-Place Student Paper (and Diversity Award winner): Carolina Velloso

Second-Place Faculty Paper: Ali Mohamed

Second-Place Student Paper: Christopher T. Assaf

Third-Place Faculty Paper: Michael Fuhlhage, Wayne State

Third-Place Student Paper: Kate Yanchulis, University of Maryland

The Top Extended Abstract Award went to Meghan McCune and John Maxwell Hamilton, (Louisiana State)

Finneman noted that Maddie Liseblad of Middle Tennessee State University was placed in nomination for second vice chair.

Other nominations from the floor: None

Motion to Close Nominations:  Jon Marshall

Second:  Dave Davies

Voting link given. Unanimous vote for Liseblad.

Auction

The division also auctioned a Mike Sweeney typewriter painting to raise money for the podcast. The painting was sold for $380 to Dale Cressman.

Incoming Chair Statement:  Will Mari

Mari’s goals for the year:

1) Support our members during a challenging year

2) Build on/reinforce existing initiatives and programs

3) Increase our outreach/connection(s) to the international media-history community

4) Increase our outreach to related fields and the community of historians of media technology

5) Hold a 2021 AEJMC pre-conference at a HBCU campus

2020 leadership team announced. 

Will Mari-Chair

Cayce Myers-Vice Chair and Programing Chair

Maddie Liseblad-Research Chair

Announcements: 

AJHA promoted for September. 

Motion to Close Meeting: Paulette Kilmer

Dale Cressman seconded.

Motion Passed, Meeting Adjourned 8 p.m. PT

Appendix:

Award winners recognized during the division’s earlier awards gala were:

Jinx Brossard for the establishment of the Jinx Coleman Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History. This year’s winners were:

Lisa Burns, Quinnipiac

Elisabeth Fondren, St. John’s

Andrew Offenburger, Miami University

Joe Saltzman, USC Annenberg

Pamela Walck, Duquesne

Donald Shaw for the establishment of the Donald Shaw Senior Scholar Award. This year’s winners was Maurine Beasley, Maryland

The Dicken-Garcia Award went to Mark Mayfield (Alabama) with advisers Chris Roberts and Dianne Bragg.

The Covert Award went to Katie Day Good (Miami).

The Sweeney Award went to Ronald Zboray and Mary Zboray (Pittsburgh).

The Best Podcast Guest Award went to Pam Parry (Southeast Missouri State)

Exceptional Service to the History Division: Madeleine Liseblad (Middle Tennessee) and

Perry Parks (Michigan State).

The Book Award went to Will Slauter (Universite de Paris). The runner-up was Aimee Edmondson (Ohio).

Submitted by Cayce Myers and Teri Finneman

AEJMC-AJHA statement on cancellation of Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference (JJCHC)

From AJHA President Donna Lampkin Stephens and AEJMC History Division Chair Will Mari:

The American Journalism Historians Association and the AEJMC History Division have decided to cancel the 2021 Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference (JJCHC).   

The leadership of AJHA and the History Division have discussed the matter, and we all believe that we need to wait until a vaccine is fully available before holding another JJCHC. 

This is for two reasons: first, as the draw of the conference is the physical place of New York City, and its archives, museums and libraries, we want to focus on providing that experience for our scholars for when going in person is as safe as possible again. And second, by deferring the conference now, and planning ahead to the future, we can better preserve our resources and do a great job when the time comes. To that end, we are still planning on holding the conference in 2022. 

We realize this decision is less than ideal—especially to those who opted to defer last year—which is why we are reaching to those individuals with some options, and they will hear from us shortly.

An alternative mid-year conference for those interested is the SE Colloquium in March, which will be via Zoom or a similar platform.  

Thank you for your understanding, and please let us know if you have questions. 

Will Mari, wmari1@lsu.edu  

Donna Lampkin Stephens, donnals@uca.edu