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2024

Engagement and Repair in Precarious Times

July 20-22, 2024

Please save the date for the 2024 Engaged Communication Scholarship Conference, scheduled for July 20-22 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Since the first Aspen Conference in 2002, a community of scholars has consistently gathered to learn from each other and improve the practices of engaged, collaborative scholarship in the communication discipline. This year’s conference will focus on the theme of repair. Out of precarity, pain, and potential sprouts exigency for repairing past wrongs and intentionally re-pairing for new collaborative possibilities. The events of the past few years have amplified attention to the disruptive power of change–extreme weather and climate change, transmissible illnesses, racial injustices, wars/conflicts, new technologies–and the need for creative partnerships to forge better futures. In times of enduring crisis , how do we do meaningful engaged work? What pairings and re-pairings become necessary to address the greatest challenges shaping our communities today? What ought engaged scholarship look like in conditions of precarity? What are technologies of repair, and how do we leverage resources of our differences to do the most good?

We welcome the submission of projects-in-progress at http://www.aspenengaged.org/submit by April 15, 2024. At the Conference, selected projects will be presented in a highly interactive discussion format in small table settings. These proposals should raise problems, questions, dilemmas, and tensions that we can wrestle with together. We welcome projects at all stages of development, as we hope to center ongoing challenges related to engaged work, including but not limited to: entering the field, relationship building, creating participative spaces, disseminating engaged products, and measuring impacts. In previous conferences, the most interesting conversations have seemed to center on problems that people have encountered or are encountering in their work.

We also welcome participation without a formal submission.

Keynote Speakers & Cases

Case 1: Repairing a Perceived “Competency Tradeoff”: Defining and Leveraging DEI for High Performance in Wildland firefighting Teams by Jody Jahn

Jody Jahn, PhD is an associate professor of communication at the University of Colorado Bolder. She uses mixed methods to examine how members of hazardous organizations communicate to negotiate action, and how members interface with organizational safety policies and documents. Recent research examines wildland firefighting workgroups. Her work appears in Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Monographs, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and others.

The uptake of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in organizations accelerated after the #metoo movement. Recently, however, popular media sources and journalistic outlets have increasingly criticized these initiatives for making working conditions more exclusionary for the groups they aim to help, and even for fostering “reverse racism” against white employees. The first part of this case study explores these dynamics within the federal wildland fire service. The case highlights key tensions that have arisen, employee pushback against these initiatives, and negative impacts DEI efforts have had for the firefighters the initiatives aim to help. One particularly damaging perception is that DEI efforts result in hiring people who are not qualified for a position just to fill a diversity quota—what we refer to as the perceived “competency tradeoff.” Due to the ubiquity of this perception, women and members of underrepresented groups constantly encounter colleagues who openly doubt their qualifications for their position, which takes a negative toll on them. Yet, many wildland firefighting teams are heavily invested in DEI and see the potential for greater inclusion to enhance high performance. The second part of this case study explores how 8 wildland firefighting team configurations interpret DEI into everyday best practices that they believe enhance their overall performance, safety, and capacity for team- and individual-level learning. To close, I’ll discuss how these best practices can be adapted to other contexts to foster inclusive team cultures.

Case 2: Prison Pedagogies and Possibilities by Ben Boyce, Meghan R. Cosgrove, and Stephen John Hartnett

Ben Boyce, PhD is a lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver on campus and in their in-prison college program. He also teaches in prisons through Regis University in Denver, and he is an editor for the annual prison poetry and art publication Captured Words/Free Thoughts. His research focuses on the intersection of the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex.

Meghan R. Cosgrove is a doctoral student in the department of Communication Studies at Colorado State Universitywhere she studies organizational and health communication in the context of incarceration. She serves as a Lecturer and Student Support Liaison for the CU College-in-Prison program and is a co-editor of Captured Words/Free Thoughts.

Stephen John Hartnett, PhD is a professor of communication at the University of Colorado Denver where he is the Director of the CU College-in-Prison Program. Hartnett served as the 2017 President of the National Communication Association and is the Founding Editor of Captured Words/Free Thoughts. His most recent book is A World of Turmoil: The United States, China, and Taiwan in the Long Cold War.

This case highlights efforts to build meaningful relationships between universities and correctional facilities to develop prosocial programming, reduce recidivism, and build new opportunities for people who have been incarcerated after they are released. A central organizing theme of the conversation will be to consider how to repair democracy, expand deliberative spaces to be inclusive of marginalized populations and build a more informed and capable citizenry. Relatedly, the presenters will challenge conference attendees to consider how we repair our respective institutions to make them more equitable, more diverse, and more attuned to the possibilities of engaged service both for and with communities in need. Specifically, this case centers on the University of Colorado Denver’s College-in-Prison Program. This case provides opportunities to grapple with critical questions related to the tensions and challenges of doing engaged work in these sorts of complex conditions.

Case 3: Exploring Collaborative Possibilities for Engaged Pedagogy and Research to Confront Campus Food Insecurity by Jasmine R. Linabary, Kyle J. Johnson, Ziyu Long, and Elizabeth Wilhoit Larson

Jasmine R. Linabary, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Public & Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona. She works alongside organizations and communities in exploring how to design more equitable and inclusive spaces for participation. She is a previous winner of the Service Engagement Award from the National Communication Association’s Organizational Communication Division for her collaborative and interdisciplinary engaged work related to food insecurity.

Kylie J. Johnson, MA is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. Her research explores the challenges that arise in social support and strategies people can implement to manage these challenges to enhance personal and relational health. She provides confidential support and advocacy as a Victim Assistance Team volunteer and serves as a mentor for the Sexual Assault Resource Team program in Fort Collins.

Ziyu Long, PhDis an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on workplace resistance and resilience, entrepreneurship, and mentoring. Ziyu’s empirical investigations entail collaborative efforts with various community members, such as faculty and students in U.S. academia and women entrepreneurs from China, Denmark, and the U.S., to examine and advocate for inclusionary and socially just ways of organizing.

Elizabeth Wilhoit Larson, PhD is an associate professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University. She studies the role of non-humans in organizing processes with an emphasis on organizational spaces as well as gendered aspects of organizing.

In the United States, college students experience food insecurity at greater rates than the general population, affecting their academic performance but also their health and well being. It can be hard to learn when you are hungry. Further, students from minoritized groups experience higher rates of food insecurity and are less likely than their peers to access available resources, making this an issue of educational equity. When our students are living under these conditions, how do we respond as engaged scholars and teachers? And how do we move beyond short-term solutions and toward more sustainable, just, and transformative change? This case introduces an engaged pedagogy and research initiative that explores the collaborative possibilities of working across multiple U.S. university campuses to respond to food insecurity among college students. Specifically, presenters will highlight a pilot project that involved partnerships between classes at Auburn University, Colorado State University, and the University of Arizona and their respective campus pantries, discussing the challenges and opportunities of these kinds of multi-sited endeavors. Through this case, conference attendees will be asked to imagine what might be possible when we work creatively and collaboratively together and invited to consider how we can leverage our collective resources to meet the needs of our students and communities.