“Commit, mom. Come on. You’ve just got to commit.”
It felt like time had stopped. My heart was pounding. A bead of sweat rolled down my face. My arms were shaking. I looked up to the bright yellow plastic rock climbing hold on the wall above me. This was the one I was supposed to reach for. There it was: right in front of me. Right there. But I would have to let go of where I was—comfortably steady with all appendages firmly placed on other holds—to reach up and grab it. I could not move.
“Take a risk, mom. Don't hesitate. You’re already on the wall. Move. Commit!”
“Breathe, Deanna,” I whispered to myself, “you’ve got this.”
“Mom … come on. Remember what you always say: Stay humble. Stay hopeful. Climb happy. … Oh come on … COMMIT!”
The moment
I remember clearly the exact juncture when I realized I had the reigns as the editor of Communication Education. There was a moment, in between reading Jon Hess’ transition email to the editorial board and the flurry of journal-related action items that appeared in my inbox, where it felt like time had stopped and I could not move. Not a second later, everything was back to its normal, high-speed pace. In that single moment, though, when time was stopped, I was absolutely paralyzed with awe and fear and honor, all at once.
The backstory
On the top row of my office there is a wall-length shelf. On that shelf stands every issue of Communication Education dating back to January, 1952: Volume 1, Issue 1. Yes, you read that correctly. Thanks to retired faculty mentors at my alma mater, I own hard copies of every issue of this journal, predating my birth. I submitted my first journal article to Communication Education as a second year master’s student. Shortly after, I received my first rejection from Communication Education. I have served on the editorial board for years. I have served as a consulting editor. I have guest edited two different special issues/sections. I have published more in Communication Education than any other single journal. I have wanted to edit this journal for my entire career.
The moment (continued)
I finished reading the editorial board transition email. I looked up to my shelf to see issue after issue after issue after issue, year after year after year of the journal that was now in my hands. I was on the climbing wall. Here it was. A conversation I had a couple months before echoed in my mind:
“Are you crazy?” a fellow Associate Dean asked, when I shared I was going to edit the journal. “Why in the world are you doing this? On top of a full-time administrative job? I mean, I support you fully, but I don't want to see you committed … ”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I am committed. That’s exactly why I’m doing this.”
I could look in and through the journals on my shelf to glimpse into the lives and minds of those who had paved this path before me.
“What were they thinking?” I wondered, of the editors who had gone before.
The time machine
As a scholar, teacher, and administrator, my brain works from a space of curiosity: forming questions about whatever is in front of me and then moving to some form of systematic inquiry to answer those questions. This task was no different. From my Communication Education collection, I pulled out the first and last issue of each editor’s term dating back to the year I was born (full disclosure, that is 1971, which landed in the middle of an editor’s term). Why purposefully choose the first and last issue? I am a person who pays attention to the thresholds in life—those moments “in between” where I (or those I care about) cross from one place to another. I have found that there is much to learn by stopping and standing in the thresholds. So I pay attention to them. For this exploration, I wanted to peer into the window of artifacts living in the thresholds of editorial transition: to see what I could learn about those who had gone before me. I asked myself the very lightly constructed research question: based on these editors’ first and last issues, what can I glean about what they wanted to bring to the scholarly conversation? What were they committed to? And what does that mean for me, as I stand in this threshold and look ahead?
Before I get to my observations: I will start with a bit of a methodological caveat. First, this exercise required that I make interpretations based on limited data. For some editors, that interpretive move was straightforward (e.g., they wrote something about their commitments); for others, I had to dig a bit deeper (even beyond the first and last issue) and make an educated guess based on patterns I saw in their volumes. Second, I recognize that I am simplifying the scenario by associating individual editors with singular commitments: that each editor likely had more than the commitment I highlight, and that some had many of the commitments I highlight even though I attribute only one to each. Third, although I am a stickler for member checks (getting feedback from participants in a study), it was impossible to do so with all editors in my sample and given I could not engage all, I did not engage any (because I did not want some to be able to weigh in while others could not). So I could be presuming commitments that did not exist or excluding those that did. Finally, I recognize here that I cannot attribute intent. I can simply share my observations and interpretations based on how editors devoted their page space.
Methodological caveats aside, here are some commitments I saw emerging in the thresholds of the editorships (1970–2017):Footnote1
Engaging teachers: From a “Teacher’s Potpourri” section (Frank Dance) to “Master Syllabi” (Lawrence Rosenfeld), there has been some consistency in devoting page space to explicitly engaging the teachers of our field. Whether in the form of “Reviews of Teaching and Learning Resources” (Dale Ecroyd), “Instructional Practices,” (Mary Roberts) or “Teaching the Basic Speech Communication Course” (Kenneth Brown), journal editors have devoted space to providing concrete information that can be immediately useful for teachers.
Synthesizing knowledge: Several editors have taken space to bring knowledge together in various forms. From evaluations of undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs in the field (James McCroskey) to reviews of communication instruction around the world (Ruth Ann Clark) to “Major Reviews” of teaching and learning constructs (Melanie Booth Butterfield), editors have integrated national surveys and scholarship in ways that provide insight into the pedagogical, curricular, and scholarly pulse of the field.
Providing perspective: Several editors have given page space over to big picture conversations. From SCA/NCA presidents’ historical “Reflections” (John Daly) to state and future of the field issues on graduate education (Gustav Friedrich), the 50th Anniversary of Communication Education (Joe Ayres), and the “Foundation and Future of Instructional Communication” that celebrated the centennial anniversary of the National Communication Association (Paul Witt), editors have provided opportunities to look inward in order to look forward—to reflect on where we are in order to steer where we are going.
Inspiring conversation: Although a one-way medium (print), several editors have devoted pages to inspire conversations about who we are and what we do, inviting readers and other scholars to either create conversations themselves or to contribute to conversations already in progress. In “Raising the Question” (Pat Kearney), encouraging “Commentary” (Doug Trank), and facilitating stimulus/response “Forums” (Jon Hess), editors have invited scholars and readers to engage with the content of this journal in interactive and dialogic ways.
The future
Isaac Newton, in a 1676 letter, wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I understand. Those who have gone before me (named and unnamed here) have contributed mightily to the conversation, and I am humbled to be the next in line. So, what am I committed to? I will first share that all of the commitments I observed in my predecessors’ volumes resonate. That said, I do have some specific commitments that are symmetrical, but not necessarily identical, to those who paved the path before me. Above and beyond the baseline of theoretical and methodological rigor, here are some commitments I have and a few ways I hope to put them into practice as editor.
Interrogating wicked problems in education: “Wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, Citation1973) are societal problems that are complex and situationally unique in formation; lacking in linear explanations; difficult or impossible to solve with testable and finite solutions; and contagious in that any potential solution spawns other wicked problems. The term “wicked” is not meant to equate to or denote these problems are evil or corrupt in any way. Rather it is meant to denote a resistance to resolution. We have a wealth of scholarly expertise to bring to bear on the wicked problems of education and I want our voices to be heard, within and outside the discipline. My forum section, “Imagining a New Landscape for Communication, Teaching, and Learning,” is the primary place where I will foster these conversations, encouraging scholars to bring expertise to understand and explore the complexities and implications of these problem on teaching and learning.
Challenging the imagination: We continue to produce high quality scholarship that shapes the field in new and innovative ways. I think there is value in asking the question, if we were to do things differently (pedagogically, theoretically, methodologically), what might that look like? Which historical pillars can we release? What new ideas should we pursue? What curiosities can we push a bit further? What exigencies can we dig into a bit deeper? I want scholars to think big and wide about what could be, in addition to what is. Each of my special issues will focus on this: inquiry that helps re-envision undergraduate education, graduate education, and pedagogical narratives. Additionally, each forum section will end with a brief “Yes, and … ” section that invites readers to entertain and ask big-picture questions to continue the conversation and imagine new areas of inquiry about the wicked problem.
Making our work matter: Our work should matter: to the teachers walking into my daughter’s 9th grade classroom, to the graduate teaching assistants walking into their first classroom, to the professors walking into their last classroom before retirement. Our work should matter to administrators mentoring new faculty or graduate students, to K12 teachers working in after-school programs, and to engaged scholars providing training to learners in the community. It will not just magically matter, though. The burden is on us to make the argument about why it does and for whom it can. This is why I will invite manuscripts in my editorship to articulate some version of “Implications for Teaching and Learning” and “Contributions” as separate sections. I do not see these sections as being context bound, either. Teaching and learning happens in many contexts and our work is applicable within and beyond the traditional classroom. In those sections, I hope authors will help readers understand the infamous “so what” question that we often push our students to address.
In a recent university-wide administrative course and curricular meeting, several items came up on the agenda for review from our college. It was an agenda populated most by our college (we are one of 10 colleges in the university), and the items on the agenda were significant (e.g., new courses focused on race, inequality, conflict, and politics; new certificate programs focused on social and behavioral health; and a new Ph.D. program focused on international security). The colleague sitting next to me from a different college looked at me and said: “Wow, you take on some big stuff, don't you?”
Yes. That is what I do.
The stakes
“Uggghhhh … Mom, snap out of it! Look down. You are LITERALLY two feet off the ground. You won't get hurt if you fall. Commit!”
As editor, although my editorial commitments feel a bit like “big stuff,” in perspective, I recognize they really are not. I have a colleague who lost a family member to a needless accident. I have a friend who has lost her house to flooding from a hurricane. I have a peer who just left this world after a ten-year battle with cancer. I have a friend who is afraid of his spouse. I have a family member who is struggling after a long-term relationship break up. I have a student who worries about where she will get her next meal. Those are real stakes. Yes, what I do as editor matters. And it does not. There are things that matter tangibly greater than what I do as editor. That said, I recognize that the position of editor brings with it responsibility. And honor. It does matter. It matters to scholars facing reappointment, tenure, and promotion. It matters to graduate students on the market for their first job; to faculty looking to move institutions for a better quality of life or a position more aligned with interests; to administrators making difficult decisions about allocating limited resources. It matters. Hence, the moment where time stopped; the moment I was filled with awe and fear and honor, in the threshold.
Since my first day as an assistant professor, I have had a printed out sheet of paper with the following quote from Stephen King’s On Writing in my office, to remind me to write with purpose:
You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page. (King, Citation2000, p. 106)
And the rest, they say …
Well, it’s not history yet.
Together, I hope we can make it so.
I am committed.
#stayhumble #stayhopeful #climbhappy
Notes
1 I placed quotations around items that were separate sections or issues of particular editors’ volumes. Trends in articles or issues with particular emphases without specific titles do not have quotations.
References
- King, S. (2000). On writing. New York, NY: Scribner.
- Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169. doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730