This year’s conference will be organized around four central issues:

Identifying “Vocabularies” of Engagement

In our opening session, we will identify current and potential vocabularies we might use to articulate what it means to be an engaged scholar to ourselves and others. Participants will be encouraged to respond to established models of engagement (e.g., problem-centered research, service learning, action research, or scholarships of Discovery, Integration, Application, and Teaching) as well as contribute their own conceptualizations of engagement.  This session will provide the foundation for articulating if, and how, our current practices are forms of engaged scholarship. 

Exploring Ways that Engaged Scholarship Can, and Has, Made a Difference

Next, we will articulate engaged scholarship from various perspectives by discussing what it looks like from within and outside of the discipline and the academy. This session will enlist engaged scholars, including communities, local organizations, researchers, funding agencies and foundations to explore the impacts and implications of engaged scholarship for communities, organizations, and the academy.

Developing Models of Engagement by Capturing Lessons Learned

Here, we will share stories about engaged scholarship and foreground the learning that these stories generate to create working models of engaged scholarship.  We will also reflect on how these models of scholarship connect and influence how we theorize communication, the methods we employ to study communication, the ways we construct and enact organizational communication pedagogy, and our relationships with stakeholders inside and outside the academy.

Identifying Strategies for Distributing and Extending the Conversation

Our closing session will adapt to the outflows of the other three sessions to ensure that the conversation continues beyond Aspen, 2009. 

      Potential outcomes include:

• creating statements that Organizational Communication scholars can use to explain to relevant stakeholders how their work is engaged scholarship.
• developing a conference output that is exciting, dynamic, and broadly accessible such as a web presence, dynamic blog, or you-tube-ready video segments,
• continuing the conversation at the Organizational Communication pre-conference at  NCA  2009.

A more detailed schedule will be posted as it becomes available.

Conference Theme and Schedule