The Community
In 2022, the organizers of the Aspen Engaged Communication Scholarship Conference embarked on what has become a multiple year project to reflect and reimagine what the Conference and the community surrounding it could and should do to support engaged communication scholarship. The 2022 conference theme read as follows:
The idea that communication scholarship should tackle important organizational, cultural, and social issues and produce actionable knowledge is at the heart of engaged scholarship. The Aspen Conference began in 2002 with a hope of facilitating conversations among communication scholars and practitioners to create research that would make a difference for people in organizations and communities. The time seems right to reflect back on the many faces of engaged scholarship over the last twenty years with an eye toward articulating our aspirations for its future. What new exciting challenges, opportunities, and directions can and should inspire engaged scholarship?
The Aspen Conference has attracted hundreds of scholars and practitioners together to explore questions of research, practice, and pedagogy and to grapple with logistical and institutional barriers to success. The Aspen Conference has invited organizational and community partners such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Wildlife Federation, and the Catamount Institute to learn how communication theory and research can be leveraged to create positive social change. We have focused on important theoretical and practical issues such as crisis, race and difference, resilience, communication design, environmental communication, and public participation. This summer’s in-person conference will focus on questions such as:
Engaged Research: What ways do theory and theory development intersect with practice? What are the puzzles, topics and concerns that can and should animate future engaged scholarship? How can we position engaged scholarship to have short- and long-term social impact? How does engaged scholarship align with the work of researchers interested in communication activism, community-based action research, and social justice?
Engaged Pedagogy: How can we mentor students to do engaged work at the undergraduate and graduate level? What kind of new projects, activities, and exercises can inform an engaged pedagogy in the future? What are the challenges and opportunities for developing an engaged pedagogy?
Engaged Scholarship Infrastructure: What structures need to be in place to encourage and sustain engaged scholarship? How can researchers leverage engaged scholarship in tenure and promotion decisions?
Our hope is to create a community event where we have the space to reflect on lessons learned about engaged scholarship and to imagine what possible directions engaged scholarship may take. Like previous years, participants will have an opportunity to submit brief works-in-progress to present at the conference and receive feedback. We look forward to seeing what we can create together.
The participants at that conference renewed a commitment to supporting engaged communication scholarship while also recognizing the need to move beyond the confines of the Conference itself and to undertake a vision setting process. The organizers convened virtual workshops and a pre-conference at NCA to continue the conversation started at this meeting in 2022.
The organizers convened virtually in later in 2022 and held a pre-conference at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association in 2023. They organized virtual workshops in 2024, and the 2024 Conference provided another milestone in this process where we finalized statements of our commitments in the conduct of engaged communication scholarship. The provisional statements shared with participants as well as additional details about the process may be downloaded here.
The Conference
The Aspen Conference has existed for multiple decades focusing on the practice of engaged scholarship in organizational communication. We invite academics and practitioners, graduate students and faculty, and anyone who is passionate about developing new models of engaged scholarship aimed at addressing significant cultural, political, and social issues that confront contemporary society. Your participation may range from simply attending the conference and seeking inspiration from other participants or presenting your own research or practice to conference participants to receive feedback and reflections on how to take it further. The choice is yours. Our conference schedule combines panel presentations regarding the conference theme, breakout sessions for participants to present their work, and case studies to create an interactive integrated experience that allows participants to think deeply about engaged scholarship and how these ideas and practices play out in their professional lives.
Comments from Previous Attendees
The Engaging Communication Conference is a unique opportunity to discuss practical implications to organizational theory. Most specifically, how can we as organizational communication scholars apply what we know to benefit organizations and their members? I have enjoyed and greatly benefited from the small group discussions with scholars and practitioners, each contributing to the future of our field. It's also a great time in a great place! - Karen Myers, University of California, Santa Barbara
The community of Aspen has long provided a hospitable setting for the development of challenging new ideas with important implications for how we conduct ourselves in society. These annual conferences are no exception. I have relished the rare opportunity to participate in detailed, far-ranging conversations with the very best communication researchers and practitioners, as we seek to enact Pam's vision of an academic field of study that really matters in the world. - Eric Eisenberg, University of South Florida
The Engaging Communication conference has the potential to help organizational communication scholars and practitioners engage constructively and collaboratively in anticipating, understanding and addressing the challenges of communicating in 21st century organizations. - Noshir Contractor, University of Illinois, Director Science and Networks in Communities
The Engaging Communication conference on organizational communication and change provided a rare opportunity for an extended exchange of ideas with noted scholars in a pristine mountain setting. The sense of fun combined with serious scholarship led to memorable learning and rethinking of concepts. Getting to know fellow scholars through ongoing interaction was especially pleasant. It was a key experience for me as I revamped my courses on organizational communication for my students; I found myself incorporating ideas and approaches I would not have thought of or felt confident in without attending the Aspen conference. - John Meyer, University of Southern Mississippi
The Engaging Communication conference has become mandatory for me. The planners always provide a program that encourages lively discussion of timely topics in a lovely setting. - Brenda J. Allen, University of Colorado at Denver
One of the blessings of working in a university is the opportunity to both work on radical sophisticated social theories and impact the larger community more directly through working on theoretically guided Interventions in significant organizations. Unfortunately, most discussions only focus on one side or another and those of us doing both have had few opportunities to talk with each other. The Engaging Communication Conferences have been immensely beneficial in the moving of big ideas into practice and using practice to pose new questions. The opportunity to share and discuss experiences--the hopes, joys, dilemmas and frustrations of our interventions--in a deep, safe and honest manner has been truly unique. - Stan Deetz, University of Colorado Boulder
For people in the early stages of crafting scholarly identities, this conference provides a resource that's in very short supply: A forum for discussion with a set of org comm scholars who have practiced and thought about "engaged scholarship" for a long time. I found that the format-along with the stunning mountain surroundings-produced stimulating conversations with scholars like these, allowing me to generate a vision of the sorts of engagement possible in my own work. - Tim Kuhn, University of Colorado Boulder
