Dear Western ABC members,
The coronavirus pandemic this year brought quite a bit of uncertainty, challenged us to adapt in unprecedented ways, and inspired innovation in all of us. I hope you stayed resilient and are finishing your 2020 on a strong note. I am delighted that our editorial team was able to give us a fall issue of the Western ABC Bulletin that features scholarship in the field of business communication. Our online traffic analysis suggests a growing number of readers and people interested in publishing in our online journal.
I wanted to share plans for our region and thoughts for innovation that we could bring to our classroom in 2021:
We are currently working with our next regional conference co-chairs, Ann and Scott Springer, of BYU Hawaii, to hold our 2022 Western regional conference on the BYU-Hawaii campus on the north shore of Oahu, HI, on February 16-18, 2022. We hope that travel will resume by then and what better place to recharge, meet our colleagues again, and maybe even catch a wave, than the island of Oahu!
I also want to highlight the Western ABC Expert Speaker initiative. Our recent shift to online teaching challenged many of us to move our instruction online. Many of us will be teaching in a hybrid or fully online mode in the spring. We have a unique opportunity of virtual space to bring in our colleagues in person to our classrooms to share their area of expertise.
We are creating a database of expert speakers who are available to come to your classroom and speak on topics of their expertise. I wanted to extend an invitation to put your name and contact information if you are interested in being an expert speaker in somebody else’s class and search for expert speakers that fit your teaching focus. Please visit a living document of online community of experts in business communication: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WF-hav9F6umL1-WA4l6IG_kTqjeyZanadx5xHMN19us/edit#gid=0
We would eventually like to publish a symposium on “remote teaching” in the Western ABC Bulletin based on these presentations so that your expertise could be shared with a wider audience.
The Virtual Business Professional project (VBP) will run again in Spring 2021 to accommodate the increased need for online instruction and the desire to teach global virtual collaboration skills to students. For more information visit https://www.marshall.usc.edu/departments/business-communication/vbp-project or contact VBP at VBP@marshall.usc.edu.
Jolanta Aritz
ABC Western Regional Vice President