Dear NCA colleagues:

It is my honor and privilege to be nominated to serve as NCA Second Vice President. I am the Newhouse Professor and Endowed Chair at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. I am wrapping up my role as Editor-in-Chief of Communication Monographs by December 2025. I am grateful to be at a stage in life, both personally and professionally, to take on significant service responsibilities.

NCA has been my professional home since 2001. Service has been the foundation of the broad and deep networks of trust and rapport I have built at NCA through my roles as Chair of the Mass Comm Division, Editor-in-Chief of Comm Monographs, Associate Editor of JACR, Editorial Board Member of Comm and Critical/Cultural Studies, Comm Education, JIIC, and Comm & Race. I have also served several divisions such as Mass Comm, Activism, International & Intercultural Comm, Asian/Pacific American Comm, Feminist & Gender Studies, Health Comm, Critical & Cultural Studies, Applied Comm, and Org Comm. What brings me the greatest joy is being a mentor to over 230 scholars and students, mostly international and/or students of color, who are planting new seeds of excellence in their own circles today. As the first editor of color of Comm Monographs, I have helped create mentorship pathways for several Associate Editors, who are highly qualified mid-career scholars of color with the experience to serve as future editors of NCA journals.

I am most grateful for being recognized as a NCA Distinguished Scholar, being one of the few women of color to receive this highest honor from NCA. My scholarship has also been recognized with several Top Paper Awards, International & Intercultural Comm Distinguished Scholar Award (2024), Presidential Citation for activist-scholarship in the #CommSoWhite movement (2023), IDEA Scholarship Award (2022), Kibler Award (2021), and the Gerald M. Phillips Award for Distinguished Applied Comm Scholarship (2020). I have served as faculty leader for the NCA Institute for Faculty Development in 2015 and the Doctoral Honors Seminar in 2022.

Without a doubt, this is a difficult phase in the history of our discipline. The threat of right-wing authoritarianism, fascism, climate crises, economic inequalities, and technological changes have led to anxieties and uncertainties. There is a lot at stake, especially for those living in precarity, poverty, and political disenfranchisement. However, NCA has a rich 111-year history where it has coped with wars, natural disasters, financial collapses, and pandemics. These experiences have made us more resilient, stronger, and wiser. As I witnessed during the #CommSoWhite movement and the establishment of the Comm Scholars for Transformation, NCA is constantly pushing the boundaries of excellence. These histories and contexts deeply shape my leadership, which places democracy, dialogue, and deliberation at its center. Through collective and intentional efforts, we will continue to stand up for excellence, truth, justice, care, respect, and dignity for all.

As a community-engaged scholar-teacher, I have relevant on-the-ground experience in fundraising, fiduciary responsibility, coalition-building, and managing large projects with tact and flexibility. Through my nonprofit, Media Rise, I have convened 65 media festivals and events since 2013. Through my Difficult Dialogues Program, I have co-facilitated 35 antiracism dialogues. As Director of CODE^SHIFT (Collaboratory for Data Equity, Social Healing, Inclusive Futures, and Transformation), we have hosted over 90 events and symposia.

As we enter the age of AI empire, it is crucial to foreground critical thinking, collaboration, dialogue, and empathy in our curriculum. To be able to ask the right questions, evaluate the quality of data, make strong arguments backed by evidence, listen empathetically, and use dialogues across differences will be exceptionally important. NCA educators must get the support and resources needed to use technology wisely and critically.

Overall, here are the key priority areas that my leadership would emphasize, in conversation with NCA leadership and membership:

• Courageous Leadership: Provide strong, ethical, caring, and courageous leadership during times of flux and uncertainty.
• Fight for Academic Freedom: Advocate for academic freedom, freedom of expression, and right to dissent for all.
• Champion for the Communication Discipline: Champion for our discipline within schools, universities, communities, and elsewhere in society.
• Overall Excellence: Continue to prioritize excellence in research, teaching, community engagement, and service in communication. Find the support and opportunities for all members to excel.
• Greater Accessibility: Emphasize accessibility, community support, and sense of belongingness to help NCA members to fully engage with, feel valued, and achieve excellence, especially for those with disabilities and/or in caregiving roles. Deepen NCA’s commitment to integrity, respect for differences, and social justice.
• Mentoring Pathways: Create mentoring pathways to learn about various aspects of communication scholarship, including research, teaching, editorial service, administrative leadership, community engagement, and policymaking.
• Healing Divides and Building Bridges: Focus on the role of dialogues and communication in building bridges, healing divides, breaking silos, fostering mutual respect, and cultivating empathy.
• Community Collaborations: Build better connections between local communities and communication scholar-teachers to serve them in more meaningful ways.
• Care and Well-Being: Center the holistic well-being of members through a focus on mental health, mindfulness, and an ethic of care that nurtures the whole self.
• Inter-Organizational Leadership Alliances: Build greater connections, coalitions, and shared resources among NCA and other professional comm organizations.
• Global Reach: Expand the global reach of NCA to make it an internationally recognized association. This means greater support for international scholars and seeking opportunities abroad for domestic scholars.
• Public Scholarship: Making our scholarship more easily available to the public, practitioners, nonprofits, government agencies, and policymakers.

I am honored to run for the NCA 2nd VP position. I bring significant experience and proven credentials in terms of scholarly excellence, institutional knowledge, administrative leadership, and programmatic initiatives to NCA. I am confident in my ability to lead NCA by working closely and collaboratively with NCA members, staff, and leaders through shared governance, inclusive excellence, and empathetic listening. Towards this end, I request your support for my candidacy. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Dr. Srividya “Srivi” Ramasubramanian, Ph.D.
Newhouse Professor & Endowed Chair
NCA Distinguished Scholar
ICA Fellow
Editor-in-Chief, Communication Monographs

I am honored to submit my candidacy for NCA’s Second Vice President. My motivation stems from a love of our field, a deep commitment to service and a passion for contributing through the leadership skills I have cultivated. Service, for me, means creating spaces where individuals feel included, valued, and empowered, just as I have been throughout my career. Reflecting on the opportunities NCA and our discipline have provided, I feel both grateful and confident in my ability to meet the responsibilities of the Second Vice President and subsequent leadership positions. Through collaborative processes I will enact my vision to continue building a culture where valuing others is central to outward practice and expression, re-examine service, and critically evaluate our conference.

My leadership experience spans academic associations, government, and corporate sectors. I have successfully launched Health Services Research and Development studies within Veterans Affairs, overseen award-winning quality improvement initiatives in Medicare Part D, and developed and launched new graduate and online programs at the State University of New York, Oswego. Each success was achieved by leading collaboratively and empowering others to contribute based on their strengths. These successes also required significant administrative skills, attention to detail, vision, organizational expertise, and budgetary oversight.

My work experience directly impacts my vision for NCA and ability to serve as a leader. Most recently within NCA, I have served as Chair of the Teaching and Learning Council and as a member of the Executive Committee, member of the Academic Freedom Taskforce, and member of the Proactive Support for NCA’s Members and Mission Working Group. The latter two efforts are driving meaningful, member-centered initiatives that will create lasting, visible, and accessible changes for our association and also deepened my understanding of our critical scholars’ experiences. Co-planning the Institute for Faculty Development for two years and the Scholar-to-Scholar program allowed me to experience a broader range of our association’s important areas. Additionally, I have served as a consultant during C.V. Consulting, which has been especially meaningful as I have had conversations with those entering the job market and those in precarious positions seeking stability. Additionally, as ECA President, I championed and helped implement two sustainable funding sources that advance IDEA principles: the Dr. James W. Chesebro Marginalized Community Scholarship Fund and the ECA Legacy Award for Distinguished IDEA Scholarship. These experiences have shown me that NCA and ECA share similar challenges.

The challenges we face as we continue to support scholarship are advocating for faculty and students who feel targeted, supporting students who lack funding, advocating for faculty with reduced professional development resources, protecting faculty in precarious positions, addressing rising convention costs, rethinking our convention model, engagement in service, and valuing diverse perspectives within the field to manage disciplinary difference productively. These issues demand innovation and change.

My vision for NCA is to continue building upon the foundation established with our Strategic Plan and IDEA Strategic Plan to foster a culture where valuing others is central to our outward practice and expression. This culture will allow NCA to advocate for and create connections for faculty and students who feel targeted and also navigate disciplinary differences productively. When implemented consistently, IDEA principles transform difference and disagreement into sources of growth. We can execute this vision through the following acts.

1. Create intentional pathways for network building especially for scholars in precarious positions or who feel targeted recognizing that strong networks foster growth, resilience, and shared success.

2. Create continued learning opportunities featuring scholars of diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

3. Implement a movement called “Making Space” asking NCA members to add scholarly work to one course each semester that represents scholars of diverse backgrounds to work toward balance.

Another key priority is re-examining service within NCA. Service fosters professional networks, mentoring relationships, leadership skills, publishing opportunities, and places to present scholarship. Our organization runs on the power of service. Service has benefits, but can be difficult or inaccessible for faculty with dwindling development funds, who are in precarious positions, and who may be defending or preparing to defend themselves. I hope members will build their service journey with NCA in the company of colleagues who have supported them throughout their careers, to look back with pride, knowing they were valued, included, and empowered by NCA, but we must assess the feasibility of service to create needed change. To strengthen this area within NCA, I propose to:

1. Survey members to assess capacity and willingness to serve, identifying barriers to engagement in service.

2. Use survey data to design strategies that increase access to service opportunities and address potential inequities in access to service or ability to serve.

3. Assess whether our current organizational structure, which includes divisions, caucuses, and sections, and respective leadership structures, remains sustainable given evolving academic demands, organizational climates, and limited professional development funding.

We must also critically evaluate our convention model. The convention is NCA’s hallmark event, and its financial and structural sustainability requires thoughtful attention. I propose collaborating with the Executive Committee, Finance Committee, and Executive Director to explore innovations that reduce costs while enhancing value and engagement. Key questions include:

1. Do we need to continue presenting research using the same models that have existed for decades?

2. Can we incorporate continuing education opportunities?

3. Should we publish accepted conference presentations as abstracts in proceedings, thereby creating more space for interactive sessions and expert talks?

My nearly 30 years of engagement with NCA and the discipline have provided me with a fulfilling professional life. I am eager to help ensure that others have a fulfilling professional life recognizing that experience may need to evolve. I will bring proven leadership, a commitment to inclusivity, and a collaborative spirit to the role of Second Vice President. Together, we can enhance our already vibrant scholarly community and expand our culture of valuing, including and empowering others. I hope to have your support and I am excited about NCA’s future.

With gratitude,

Katherine