Don’t Delay: Early Bird Registration Ends Sept. 12 | | |
Early bird registration and housing for the 111th Annual Convention continues through Sept. 12. Don’t miss your chance to join us at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in the Denver Metro Area, Nov. 20-23, for a unique experience of learning, networking, and inspiration.
Key Registration Details:
-
Early bird deadline: Sept. 12 (register soon to save money and secure your spot)
-
Life and retired members: No cost to register
-
Member rates: Membership must extend through Dec. 1, 2025, or later
Housing Details:
- Best rates guaranteed through NCA’s room block
- Book early to secure your preferred room type and foster community with fellow attendees
- Benefits NCA: Room block reservations help us negotiate better pricing for future conventions
| | Graduate School Open House & Career Center | |
Two valuable networking opportunities await you at the convention:
Graduate School Open House
Thursday, Nov. 20 | 1-4 p.m.
Connect with 75+ participating colleges and universities. Faculty representatives will be available at individual booths to discuss programs, admissions requirements, and academic communities.
NCA Career Center
Friday, Nov. 21 | 9 a.m. – Noon | Free to all registered attendees
University hiring departments nationwide will have booths for job seekers, featuring opportunities from assistant professor to lecturer positions across specializations including strategic communication, digital media, interpersonal communication, and organizational communication. CV consulting also available.
For questions about the GSOH and Career Center, contact convention@natcom.org.
| |
Meeting & Reception Space Requests
| | |
Create memorable connections by hosting your own departmental reception, alumni gathering, or strategic meeting at the convention. Choose from intimate meeting rooms perfect for focused discussions or spacious reception areas ideal for networking events. With flexible configurations and professional support, you can bring together current students, alumni, colleagues, and future collaborators in one place during the year’s most important communication gathering.
Important Dates:
- Submit requests by Sept. 15 (late requests considered if space available)
- Space assigned first-come, first-paid basis
- Space confirmations begin Sept. 30
For questions about meeting & reception space requests, contact convention@natcom.org.
| | Partner with NCA at the 111th Annual Convention | |
Connect with 3,500+ communication professionals, educators, and students through strategic sponsorship opportunities. Stand out with high-impact options like registration badge sponsorship (your logo on every attendee’s badge throughout the convention), exclusive general session sponsorships during our marquee programming, or direct access to job seekers and hiring institutions through career fair partnerships.
Maximize your presence with exhibit booths on the convention floor or targeted advertising opportunities in our printed program and mobile app. Advertising deadline: Sept. 15 | Reserve sponsorship and exhibit spaces early for best selection and positioning. All sponsorships include recognition in printed materials, mobile app visibility, and website acknowledgment—ensuring your brand reaches our engaged academic community.
Ready to Partner? View our complete sponsorship menu and pricing or contact sales@natcom.org to discuss custom partnership opportunities.
| |
Register Now for the August VLO: “Breaking Down the NCA Budget: A Guide to Nonprofit Association Financial Literacy“
| | |
“Breaking Down the NCA Budget: A Guide to Nonprofit Association Financial Literacy”
Join the National Communication Association (NCA) on Friday, Aug. 29, at 2 p.m. EDT for a 60-minute interactive workshop designed to enhance your understanding of nonprofit association finances and empower you as an informed NCA member.
In this VLO, you’ll learn how to read and interpret NCA’s financial documents, understand how your membership investment supports the organization’s mission, and explore opportunities to get involved in financial governance. Through live polls and real-time document review, this session will share information on nonprofit financial management and equip you to ask informed questions about NCA’s fiscal decisions.
For questions about this event, please email Rachael E. Purtell, National Communication Association Research Associate, at: academic@natcom.org
| | Register Now for the September Public Program | | |
“Caring and Communicating: The Role of Family in Times of Need”
Join the National Communication Association (NCA) on Monday, Sept. 15 at 1-2:30 p.m. EDT for a transformative virtual event that delves into the crucial role of family communication in effective caregiving. Drawing on insights from Affection Exchange Theory, Relational Maintenance, and broader family communication scholarship, it offers research-based approaches, practical tools, and strategies to help families strengthen bonds, navigate caregiving, and thrive together.
Join us with top and emerging family and interpersonal communication scholars as we arm broad audiences with key insights from communication scholarship. Family communication plays a vital role in providing care, support, and resilience during times of need. This program will offer attendees practical insights on how to navigate difficult conversations, strengthen family relationships, and foster meaningful connections that promote well-being. Join us to explore how effective communication can help families support one another through life’s challenges.
For questions about this event, please email Rachael E. Purtell, NCA Research Associate, at: academic@natcom.org.
| | |
Applications due Monday, Sept. 1 for NCA research and pedagogy grants.
NCA will award a new research grant for 2026, the NCA 2025 President’s Leading with Imagination and Forward-thinking (L.I.F.T.) grant to help execute and support NCA’s mission, strategic plan, and 2025 goals. Applications are sought from NCA members who seek to imagine, re-imagine, and/or be forward-thinking in their pursuit of communication scholarship. L.I.F.T. grant priorities include: threats to re-imagining inclusion; threats to re-imagining what it means to think local and global; threats to communication ethics in an age of mis/disinformation; threats to I.D.E.A.; threats to academic freedom; threats to disenfranchised or marginalized groups; censorship due to the political or ideological content of the work; and other issues outlined in the criteria for evaluation explicated below. Applications are due Monday, Sept. 1, and more information is available here.
NCA is continuing to award for 2026 its Research Cultivation Grants, Advancing the Discipline Grants, Communication Pedagogy Grants, and grants from the Dale G. Leathers Memorial Fund to Promote Communication Studies in Emerging Democracies. Applications for all of them are due on Monday, Sept. 1. Grant funds will be awarded on or after Jan. 2, 2026, when awardees’ institutions have completed necessary steps with NCA.
Leathers Fund grants vary from year-to-year but recently have been about $800. Funds are for travel and other expenses for conducting research in countries that can be said to be emerging democracies. More information is available here. Applications are due Monday, Sept. 1.
Communication Pedagogy Grants, now in their second year, allow for NCA members to explore innovative pedagogical practices, assessment design, and learning environments. Grants will fund proposals that are most likely to (a) have a long-term impact on faculty, students, or community environments; (b) that support, challenge, experiment with, and/or advocate for impactful and enduring change in marginalized spaces inside or outside the classroom; and (c) that support exploration of transferable instructional communication methodologies, practices, content, or models. More information is available here. Applications are due Monday, Sept. 1.
Advancing the Discipline Grants are unique grants for projects that will advance the communication discipline overall. All funded activities must align with the goals of NCA’s strategic plan and have a widespread impact that reaches beyond a single department, campus, or NCA unit. More information is available here. Applications are due Monday, Sept. 1.
Research Cultivation Grants facilitate first-time grant-seeking for those without prior grant experience and/or those desiring to build a foundation for future grant pursuits. Therefore, RCG is a grant-seeding program with both short-term and long-term promise. Funded projects have the potential to make significant contributions to the study and practices of communication. More information is available here. Applications are due Monday, Sept. 1.
Questions about these NCA grants, and also NCA Student Caucus Travel Grants, should be directed to Dane S. Claussen, PhD, NCA Director of Research, Publications, and Professional Advancement, at academic@natcom.org.
| | Check Out the Latest Issue of Spectra | | |
The July 2025 issue of NCA’s Spectra magazine offers a wide variety of helpful, interesting and sometimes inspiring articles. If you have been having a difficult time keeping up with the daily assaults on US higher education by the Trump Administration, we’ve been keeping up for you and have complied a timeline of Trump Administration actions on higher education since January 20.
Dr. Marina Levina, University of Memphis, and her co-presenters in an April NCA Virtual Learning Opportunity (VLO), circle back to summarize some of their research and thoughts about authoritarianism around the world. We summarize for you the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ latest Humanities Departmental Survey, which includes some perhaps surprising data about Communication departments. NCA Research Associate Rachael Purtell interviews University of Kansas professor Angela Gist-Mackey on her community-engaged, social justice-focused, organizational communication research. Steven A. Beebe shares with all NCA members his remarks in November upon receiving the Wallace A. Bacon Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award, which he largely devoted to remembering his mentors.
Our recap of June’s NCA Doctoral Honors Seminar includes insightful reflections from three of the student participants. Spectra also provides full details on NCA’s July Institute for Faculty Development, an uplifting column by President Jeanetta D. Sims, and as always, an informative column by Executive Director Justin Danowski.
The next issue will be released in November. We invite members interested in contributing to reach out at spectra@natcom.org.
| | NCA Leadership Positions: Nominations Now Open | | |
We are excited to announce that the 2025 Call for Nominations for NCA leadership positions is now open! We are seeking individuals for key leadership roles such as NCA Second Vice President, members of the Legislative Assembly, Councils, Standing Committees, National Award Selection Committees, and more. These positions offer a chance to collaborate with others and support the strategic plan of the Association for advancing communication scholarship and practice.
Nomination deadlines
For Second Vice President, Legislative Assembly, and Leadership Development Committee: Sept. 5
For Councils, Award Selection Committees, and other Governance Positions: Oct. 1
If you have any questions, please email nomination@natcom.org.
| | Global Inclusion Highlighted at 2025 NCA-CUC Summer Conference | | NCA Second Vice President Shaunak Sastry, PhD, recently participated with scholars globally at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Communication, Governance, and Media in the Age of Globalization in Beijing. The event was co-sponsored by NCA and the Communication University of China (CUC). Sastry, in his welcome address, highlighted the need for building a communications discipline that is globally inclusive through international collaboration. The conference highlighted a range of panels and presentations and showcased NCA’s commitment to fostering dialogue and collaborations across cultures, countries, and academic communities. | | New NCA Resource on Addressing Authoritarianism and Fascism | |
NCA is launching a resource library on Authoritarianism and Fascism. Titled “Addressing Authoritarianism,” the library is conceived as a resource to enable successful pedagogical, research, creative, and administrative interventions into authoritarianism and fascism. Available to all, this public resource features theoretical, historical, and pedagogical resources on authoritarianism and fascism for scholars and educators to use in their teaching and writing.
The library contains theoretical and historical texts in communication and beyond; college-level and K-12 lesson plans, and extensive media databases aimed to promote critical interventions into authoritarianism and fascism. The library addresses authoritarianism and fascism as a global phenomenon with an emphasis on different regions across the globe. Created as a volunteer effort organized by Marina Levina, PhD (Editor of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies and Chair of Critical Cultural Studies Division), the library will be a living document—an evolving work over time through work and contributions from others in NCA and beyond
| | NCA National Office Wants Your Superb Syllabi | |
As part of the NCA’s project of building out its new website, the NCA staff is asking that you consider sending to us your excellent syllabi!
Do you have a fantastic one for the foundational course? An interesting one for interpersonal communication? A super one for small group communication? An outstanding one for organizational communication? A dedicated one for death and dying communication? A scintillating one for science communication?
Please email them (PDF or Word only) to: academic@natcom.org We can’t guarantee that every one of them will be posted on our website, but we promise to carefully review each one and to keep adding to a syllabi library on an ongoing basis!
| | Communication Currents, Vol. 2; No. 16 |
The latest Communication Currents is out: “A plea for democratic resistance: Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s demosprudence through public address“. Click the button below to read and learn more.
| | | | | |
