Fanfare for fifty: A brief history of the Central States Speech Association to 1981

Communication Studies, Spring 1999 by Reid, Loren

When, in 1933, the Association was considering publishing a journal, the prevailing argument against it was: Not enough manuscripts will be submitted. (The same argument was made in 1950, against the founding of The Speech Teacher). This argument has not been heard recently.

VII

Looking back over the First Fifty Years, attending a convention not with two dozen programs but seventy-five, and noting a registration of no mere 125 or even 300, we can view with pride what lies ahead

After a Golden Anniversary convention should come a Golden Anniversary project to chart the next half century. To use the classic symbols, what can we do between MCMLXXXI and the years ahead? How can meetings serve the needs of our clientele still better? What kind of materials do Journal readers find most stimulating? Could we produce an interesting, informative, personable, newsletter? Should we, with other regional groups, commission an Index? (An author likes his stuff to be readily locatable.) Were we right to abandon our Directory? An annual directory is an opportunity to present not only names of members, but also biographical information such as degrees, and both home and office addresses. Like the SCA Directory, it can contain lists of past officers and editors; and also outstanding young teachers of past years, convention cities, and other reference, historical, information.

How can we augment our resources still further? Can we hold our members longer? Can we devise new sources of income as fruitful as the four-way journal plan or the institutional membership? Can we better emphasize the inherent, built-in advantages of a regional convention meeting in the spring: less travel expense, greater intimacy, fewer concurrent sessions, special opportunities for job seekers and talent scouts?

In more ways than one, the thirteen states of the mid-American region are the heartland of the discipline. I would rather make this bold claim than to dig up all possible supporting facts, but I readily count that more than half of the Speech Communication Association's officers and editors of the last decade live in our area. A few years ago it was reported that Central States graduate departments had conferred nearly twice as many Ph.D.'s in speech communication as all other regions combined.

These observations, however, are surely too chauvinistic and provincial to dwell upon. Here and now we can note that our membership has quadrupled its best showing in our first decade. Nearly 500 of us subscribe to all four regional journals. Furthermore, 340 members of the Western association receive CSSJ through their journal exchange program, as do 350 from the Eastern and 312 from the Southern association. Four hundred and seventy-four libraries display our Journal on their sheves. Our programs, like those of the other regional groups, draw talent from all over the country.

Our founders would be astonished beyond words.

I have written about the Association, not about the discipline, except incidentally. Yet this anniversary is an occasion to remind ourselves of the immense value of what we do. We teach the art and science of communication, without which the human race would be a sorry sight. We communicate our own ideas and feelings in situations like conversation, discussion, and public speaking. We communicate the ideas and feelings of others in situations like acting and the reading of literature. Our discipline involves teaching people to do these things well. Our research takes place in the classroom, the library, the laboratory, the studio, the clinic, the theatre, the highways and byways. Our professional associations help us to share our experiences, to learn from one another.