Special Minutes

Minutes of the NJCA annual business meeting
April 14, 2018, Brookdale Community College, NJ   

1. Call to Order: After lunch, the meeting was called to order at 12:25 by President Gina Marcello as she welcomed the attendees to the 22^nd annual conference: Opening Doors, Building Bridges: Promoting Civility.
2. President’s Report: She reported that through the efforts of Treasurer, Chris Caldiero, the association’s nonprofit status has been restored. In addition, she thanked Social Media Director, Chis Walker for the restoration of the NJCA website and 1^st Vice President Barbara Baron for organizing this year’s conference.
3. Treasurer’s Report: Christopher Caldiero reported that the NJCA has regained its nonprofit status with the IRS. In addition, there is now a PayPal account with a linked checking account. Current plans point to using the same kind of online advance registration procedure next year. Overall, the association is in good financial shape.  Income is expected to cover expenses.
4. Second Vice President’s Report: Todd Kelshaw announced that next year’s conference currently is scheduled for April 6, 2019 at Montclair State University with the theme: “Fun and Games” (as interpreted  broadly to include ideas as diverse as Wittgenstein,  gaming, sports,  debate, etc. ). Dr. John Gastil will give the Keynote address.  A renowned scholar in deliberative democracy, Dr. Gastil also researches group decision making and online civic engagement.
5. Journal Editor’s Report: Gary Radford provided a written report on the status of Atlantic Journal of Communication (AJC) (see below). He reminded the body that the Journal has had a long history which actually predates the NJCA. Several factors demonstrate the journal’s quality and credibility, including an international reach, blind peer review, competitive acceptance rates, and being published by Taylor & Francis, the same company used by the National Communication Association. There are five issues per year with the fifth generally being a special issue. The next such special issue is being edited by Dr. Howard Giles on the topic of Group Communication.

Continue reading →

Minutes – NJCA Meeting (submitted by Erica Osmond)
October 14, 2017, Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, NJ

Attendance:

• Barbara Baron, Brookdale Community College
• Gina Marcello, Georgian Court University
• Todd Kelshaw, Montclair State University
• Christopher Caldiero, FAirleigh Dickinson University
• Christopher Lynch, Kean University
• Allison Edgley, Kean University
• Erica Osmond, Rowan College at Burlington County
• Henrietta Walker, Kean University

1. Call to order: 10:17am and welcome by Barbara Baron
2. Approval of minutes: approval of minutes were passed from the March 25, 2017 meeting.
3. New Business:
   a. Conference Date: The annual NJCA conference will be held at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey on Saturday April 14, 2018.
   i. The NJCA “not for profit” status was reinstated.
   ii. Concerns about conference cost came up during discussion by meeting attendees. It was shared that Brookdale Community College will waive the conferences space. However, the NJCA will be responsible to pay a maintenance fee (fee total was not shared), a technology fee for one technology person (fee total was not shared), and a food and beverage fee (fee total was not shared).
   iii. A review of the current budget was presented. An estimated total of available funds is $5,500. The $5,500 estimated budget will need to be used for partial conference costs and web page creation project. (See IV regarding web page project)
   iv. Currently the web page for the NJCA does not display correctly. Viewers are seeing the code (HTML) on the home page and the webpage sits on the Rutgers server. Gina Marcello has been working with the Rutgers University technology department to solve this issue with little success. It was decided after discussion that the NJCA would like to create a web page that its Executive Board could have control of easily through a program such as WordPress. Some of this years estimated available assets ($5,500) will need to be used to support this project. We will need to pay a web builder to move information from the broken site to the new site.b. Journal
   i. Questions came up as to who actually receives a hard copy of the journal. After discussion it was concluded that some members are getting online access to the journal if their names are in the database. However, we need to find an efficient way to send current member names to Taylor and Francis for journal access.
   ii. Questions arose regarding what the cost of the journal was based on and if a hard copy was any longer needed.
   iii. Dan Leyes, Membership Director should be sending an updated list of names to Taylor and Francis and needs to get clarification from them on the procedures for journal access.c. Theme
   i. Taking Sides: The Challenge of Civil Discourse will be the 2018 NJCA conference theme.
   ii. Keynote Speaker: Barbara Baron will be inviting Dr. Clark Olsen from Arizona State University to be the keynote speaker for the NJCA 2018 conference in April.
   iii. Barbara Baron will also speak with Oxford University Press to possibly sponsor Dr. Olsen’s trip if he accepts the invitation to speak. She will also ask if Dr. Olsen’s new text can be issued to conference participants.
   iv. The idea of “Fun & Games” was suggested as a theme for a future conference.

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 11:30 am.

NJCA Executive Board Phone Conference
Thursday, February 8, 2018 – 5:30pm
In attendance:  Barbara Baron, Rick Dool, Mike Echols,  Allison Edgely, Todd Kelshaw ,               Christopher Lynch, Robert Mann, Gina Marcello,  Nick Messina , Evelyn Plummer, John Pollock , Christopher Walker

Conference Planning Updates:

• First Vice President, Barbara Baron gave several updates. Currently approximately four submissions have been received from faculty and six from individual students. Several board members announced plans to submit additional panels. Nevertheless, the board strongly supported sticking to past practice and extending the submission deadline beyond the current date of 2/14/18.
• Some clarification was requested on the features of an Institutional Membership (Fee includes 2 faculty members and 4 students [or 1 faculty member and 6 students] / Institutional memberships also include special rates for an ad in the program, names listed in the program , and acknowledgement during the business meeting.)
• Although many of the College of New Jersey authors have a scheduling conflict (a health conference in Kentucky occurring on the same date) Barbara pointed out that in the case of multiple-author, student papers, it is not appropriate for the same individual to present more than one paper orally — even if he/she was a listed author on more than one paper.
• Immediate Past President, Bob Mann will work to ensure that the keynote speech is recorded.
• Brookdale Community College is generously providing usage of their facilities without extra charge and is allowing for use of outside catering services.
• Second Vice President, Todd Kelshaw volunteered to assist Special Projects Director, Rick Dool with reading submissions and selecting the best paper winners.
• Todd Kelshaw will coordinate with Barbara about which institutions might want to have a table. For example, he is interested in starting to promote Montclair as the location of next year’s conference.

Financial Matters:

• Prior to the phone meeting, Treasurer, Chris Caldiero reported a balance of $8300  in the treasury—not including a pending payment to Taylor Francis for the Atlantic Journal of Communication. Chris is working on reactivating our Paypal account which currently is still under the name of a long past treasurer.
• Several entities are providing financial support. We are particularly grateful for the continued contributions and support from Rutgers. This year Rutgers is providing $1500. The board expressed the importance of maintaining this alliance and Rick Dool verified that Rutgers is still interested in maintaining this connection. We probably should work toward holding the conference at Rutgers in the near future.
• Barbara has been able to gain additional financial support from a variety of sources:
• Kendall Hunt will pay for air fare of the keynote speaker (Dr. Clark D. Olson, Professor of Communication at the Hugh Downs School of Communication at Arizona State University. Dr. Olson is also willing to do an additional guest talk at Rutgers on the topic of civil dialogue but Rick Dool observed that might not be logistically feasible at this time. MacMillan publishers will be contributing $175 which we will put toward Dr. Olson’s lodging costs. Right now, the plan is for Dr. Olson to stay for two nights and he will receive an honorarium of $600.
• Once again, the issue was raised about the high charges we receive from Taylor Francis (approximately $2000 a year). Of particular concern is the inaccurate distribution of the hard copy journals and the desirability of conversion to an ejournal. Some of these issues might be fixed with a more direct connection between our conference registration lists and Taylor/Francis’ mailing lists (e.g. student registrants should not be receiving the journal).   Barbara Baron and Public Relation Director, Allison Edgely have been unsuccessful in getting satisfactory responses from the contact person at Taylor/Francis: “Gillian”. They will be reaching out to our Journal Editor, Gary Radford who also has raised some of these issues with T/F in the past. Barbara also is pursuing the possibility of having AJC copies available at the conference.
• Our non-profit status problems have been solved!

Updates on Website & Listerv issues.

• Recently both the NJCA website as well as the membership email list has required major reconstruction. Social Media Director, Christopher Walker has already migrated key elements. There are still several problems with the reconstruction of the listserv. Several people have reported not receiving the calls this year even though Barbara had her secretary create a mass mailing of approximately 570 names in order to resend the call on 1/31/18. However, some people reported seeing lists out there with as many as 1600 names although not all may be valid. Several board members commented that this is an easy problem to fix and should be a task priority after this year’s conference.  In addition, information about the call has been disseminated through other means. Graduate and Undergraduate communication departments and Community Colleges have been directly contacted via those board representatives. In addition, President Gina Marcello has posted the call on Twitter and Facebook.
• The conference registration function still needs to be added to the webpage. Barbara Baron and Chris Caldiero both endorse having all registrations done in advance if at all possible.
• Christopher Walker has put in considerable work to re-instate our website. According to current arrangement is that Chris receives $20. monthly to maintain the site and he will submit an invoice for $200 for the work done to accomplish the migration. Although precedent exists for paying for website maintenance (e.g. we had agreed to pay Andy Mudrak of Rutgers $500 per 6 months—even though he did not receive all payments), Adjunct Certification Coordinator,  Christopher Lynch offered the recommendation to have the job performed by a fulltime faculty member who could use the website work to fulfill service-to-the-organization. President Gina Marcello observed that a high level of skills will be necessary to maintain a professional looking site, and we probably will need to pay for that.

Respectfully submitted by Evelyn Plummer, Recording Secretary, 2/11/18