I'm on my way returning home after attending the ICA midyear Executive Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., which was held in person for the first time since the pandemic. It was tremendously encouraging to review reports from various committees and task forces, and learn about what has been going on behind the scenes. I was also immensely impressed by how Division/Interest Group leaders have been working tirelessly to reach out to members from diverse backgrounds and actively engage students and early career scholars in creative ways.
During our meeting, we also had the opportunity to hear an update from the Strategic Planning Task Force, co-chaired by Former President Cynthia Stohl (UCSB) and Karin Wilkins (U of Miami). The SPTF has been diligently working to articulate ICA's overall strategy to support its mission over the coming three to five years. As part of this process, a member survey was conducted to identify ICA's strengths and weaknesses, and determine priorities as we move forward.
While remaining cautious in interpreting the findings given the relatively low response rate and the potential self-selection bias, I found it heartwarming that approximately three quarters of the respondents are somewhat to very satisfied with their Divisions/Interest Groups and "being part of a professional community." At the same time, the respondents are less satisfied with "student and early career scholars support and programming" as well as the ICA Career Center, which highlights areas where we need to focus more.
Regarding strategic priorities, respondents ranked "advancing communication research and scholarship" as the highest priority, followed by "expanding international outreach and collaboration." In general, "enhancing member engagement and service" and "promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and access" received similar ratings, although these ratings varied across years of membership. To me, these results represent a reaffirmation of ICA's mission statement, which is displayed on our website: "The International Communication Association aims to advance the scholarly study of human communication by encouraging and facilitating excellence in academic research worldwide." They also align well with the findings that 4 out of 5 respondents agreed that ICA has been somewhat to very successful in "providing an international forum to enable the development, conduct, and critical evaluation of communication research" and "sustaining a program of high-quality scholarly publication and knowledge exchange that enhances the public good."
Interesting, albeit not surprising, is that only a very small proportion (3%) of the respondents considered "strengthening financial sustainability" the ICA's top priority. From the strategic planning perspective, however, this poses an inherent challenge, especially considering the strong demands from the membership for more funding for members from the Global South, scholarships for graduate students, more affordable conference and membership fees, and increased financial support for regional activities, to name just a few. Combined with the movement toward Open Access journals, which will reduce a significant portion of the current revenue stream, the SPTF and the EC have begun brainstorming ideas for the sustainable development of ICA and will continue to explore a wide range of options. It is truly an exciting time to plan for the future of ICA, and we welcome your brilliant ideas!