Dear Western ABC members,
Happy New Year! We are welcoming 2022 with a new edition of the Western ABC Bulletin that features scholarship in the field of business communication. I want to thank our editors, Sushil Oswal and Mikel Chertudi, for keeping us connected through this online publication.
As much as we had hoped to be the first regional conference to bring ABC-ers back together face to face, we had to postpone our ABC Western region conference on the BYU-Hawaii campus in Oahu, HI until February 2023. If you have your proposal submitted and accepted, we look forward to seeing you then. If you decide that you want to join our region in 2023, you can still submit papers to the conference organizers. The submissions will open again in spring 2022 (https://www.businesscommunication.org/p/cm/ld/fid=1142).
Our Western ABC Expert Speaker initiative is going strong, and I hope that you take advantage of this unique opportunity to bring in our colleagues in-person to our classrooms to share their areas of expertise. Please read more on the Expert speaker initiative in the spring 2021 issue of the Western ABC bulletin (https://abcwest.org/category/spotlight/) and contact Erin Paradis (eparadis@arizona.edu) directly for details.
Virtual Business Professional project (VBP) is running again in Spring 2022 (February 21- March 11) 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. In the fall semester, 535 students from 14 universities in 7 countries worked on projects that included VBP company sponsors from Google, Netflix, and SpaceX.
Finally, please consider submitting your teaching or research scholarship to the Western ABC Bulletin. The goal of this online publication is to serve our professional community by making relevant material available quickly and putting resources at our fingertips. I hope you will enjoy reading the new issue.
Jolanta Aritz
ABC Western Regional Vice President