Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of Growing Up Comm, a production of the International Communication Association Podcast Network. This series discusses topics that are primarily relevant for students and early career scholars, and in today’s episode, we’ll be talking about professional development opportunities across ICA divisions. Growing Up Comm episodes are hosted by the ICA Student and Early Career Advisory Council co-chairs, and I am one of your hosts, Dr. Chrissy Cook, Postdoctoral Researcher at National Chengchi University based in Taipei. Today we are talking with Dr. Nancy Dai, and I'd like to open the floor to my esteemed guest to introduce herself...
My name is Nancy Dai. I'm currently working as an assistant professor at the Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong. I graduated from Michigan State University from the Department of Communication in 2018. Thanks very much for having me on the podcast.
I should also note that Nancy is our incoming co-chair of the CAT Committee. What professional development opportunities have you taken advantage of that ICA offers, since the topic of this podcast is, indeed, professional development within ICA?
My earliest memory with ICA support began with my first ICA in 2013. I sent a humble student paper to the Popular Communication Division, and it got accepted. I wrote a cute student paper about how Chinese celebrities communicated with their fans on social media. So I applied for a student travel grant, and I got it. I clearly remember the division chair handing out the checks in the hallway, that was a very heartwarming moment for me. As an early career scholar, I hadn’t even started my doctoral training yet. That was my very first professional development support that I got from ICA. Also, I consider this co-chair position a great professional development opportunity because, when you're put in a position like this, it forces you to take on more of a “macro" point of view of the field; forces you to think, “How do we develop as a discipline?”
It makes sense. I know that the CAT Division has a doctoral consortium they do every year. Are there other kinds of events that the different divisions have put on that you've taken advantage of over your ICA career?
I have to confess that I'm very guilty of staying within my own division. When you go to a conference, you’ll see friends in the hallway and you say hello to them, and you'll end up going to the same session with them, and they tend to do research in your own field. CAT is a big field – to my understanding, it is one of the biggest in our conference. I'm guilty for staying within this bubble. I hope by taking on this co-chair position, I will force myself to do better in this respect, and hopefully do something to motivate the other young scholars to look outside of what their division is doing.
I think it happens to a lot more people than just you. I think that's very fair, and also a very common experience from the larger programs, scholars who come from “major” players, like Michigan, where you have a built-in network. Even though you have that network, you have to build your own bubble and then break it repeatedly so that you grow as a scholar. Since I've been around ICA for a minute or two myself, I do know that some other divisions will offer scholar hours, and that's something that I really took advantage of. I'm currently a postdoc at National Chengchi University, and that's because I met my supervisor through a “scholar hours” program.
I definitely remember the scholar hours, or something that has a similar format, conversing with, for example, the editors of the major ICA flagship journals, and I've attended those sessions. Definitely, I think such an event would be very helpful for all scholars alike, not only early career scholars.
Not everybody knows everything about every publication – that would be an unhealthy devotion to one's discipline – so these kinds of things can help a little bit of everyone, I agree. What do you see as some of the challenges of Growing Up Comm, “growing up ICA”, from student to early career? What do you think some of the obstacles {are} that young scholars of today need to overcome?
If you were to ask me this question three years ago, I would give you different answers. But now that I have a scholar's career, from being a PhD student to assistant professor, I'm now on the opposite side of the table. One of the things that I notice about students, is sometimes they would come to me and say, “Could you look at my cover letter, I'm applying for jobs”, because that's among the most immediate goals for any PhD student: they have to graduate, to finish their dissertation, and find a job, right? What I noticed from what they write is there's an overly-heavy focus on the dissertation. I call that the “student mentality”. So every time I tell students, “You have to break away from that. You're applying for a job. You have to think of yourself and talk about yourself as a member among your future colleagues. You have to function as an assistant professor or as a postdoc when you start your PhD training. Don't be stuck in that student mentality.” We should convey this message to students: your career development starts the moment when you begin your training. When I was a PhD student, my advisors always tell me, “You should play in a big pool, talk to established scholars, see how they function because that's future you.” Another aspect is the pandemic: it's certainly presenting a lot of challenges in terms of how we, as a professional organization, can do our best to keep people involved, while facing the challenges of not being able to bring people together in one physical location. I kept thinking about how we, as a scholars organization, can best utilize different ways to keep everybody involved.
Both of us have studied internationally and are now based in Asia, and our system of semesters here in Taipei is such that we're based on the lunar calendar. When I go to ICA, I'm teaching during the entire time frame. It presents a very “Americentric” style, because, in North America, they are finished by May. That is a major issue, especially early career when you really need those conferences and those publications: unless you're based in the U.S., it's really tough to organize your schedule around something that is, for you, in the middle of your semester. That's a very Asian problem that both of us are experiencing right now, but I think the same thing exists in other cultural or geographic contexts. Combine that with the pandemic, and it's just a real hurdle that all of us are going to have to work through. How do you think ICA should balance? We have an enormous student population and a very limited number of senior scholars who also want to enjoy the conference. I have no idea how to solve this problem.
In terms of organizing events that bridge them together, maybe technology is the answer. We can easily set up, while organizing a physical session, some sort of a remote Zoom. There's no limit on the number of people who can join the Zoom session. As long as the audiovisual technology setup in the conference room is good enough, everybody can get involved in an adequate way. I found that when I teach on Zoom, students have more courage to interact with me because they can private message me. They don't have to be cognizant of, “What if I'm asking a stupid question? What if everybody else knows the answer to the question, and only I'm asking you that stupid question?” They don't have that concern anymore. That could be an advantage of communicating remotely through technology.
That makes a lot of sense. We probably are under utilizing what we have available to us, especially given we have something like 700 800 people who specialize in communication and technology, but it's something that we can improve on. The pandemic has really put a spotlight on the capacities of technologies, the weaknesses and strengths of technologies and how we can use them and not use them. I've also experienced a lot of people saying that they have zoom fatigue, for instance. We have a lot of people that are really concerned about attending virtual conferences, because they really benefit face to face. But given we have a lot more students than we have senior scholars, technology may be a way to mediate or mitigate that issue of unequal resources.
Yes, I agree. The solution would have to be finding that balance between physical interaction and virtual interaction. Ideally, harnessing the good sides about both. But that takes a lot of understanding of how people communicate and also intelligence with organizing and coordinating in general. If I get to attend the conference physically, I look forward to explore Paris and feel the culture there; the opportunity to either falsify my stereotypes or confirm them. If I'm attending virtually, I interact with speakers in the panels and sessions in a more intimate way. We as humans are shrewd, adaptive users of technology. So maybe there is a chance for technology to bring us together in a more intimate way than sitting in the same room amongst a vast audience. Who knows?
Last year, I had an experience similar to what you described earlier: with your students only, I was chairing a virtual session, and I had a very big name in my session, and as Chair I had to comment and say something intelligent about his presentation – so, I'm looking forward to challenging myself, whether I'm chair or not, using that beautiful “pseudonymity” that we have, or that sense of anonymity that we have behind the screen to comment on someone I'd be too nervous to raise my hand in, in real life.
That was a very interesting way to think about pseudonymity: it gives you more confidence in terms of commenting on big scholars research. I appreciate that. That's a really fresh perspective.
Sounds like there's a study in there somewhere. For any of you listening, if you want to write this paper, go for it! We endorse it as a good idea! So, when you think back to being a student, you mentioned receiving a travel grant. What other kinds of support would you have liked to have seen as a student and what kind of support are you looking at now, going into your fourth or fifth year as an assistant professor? What should we be doing as an organization to support people at these different phases in their career?
ICA currently has a lot of initiatives in terms of financial support, information support, and overall, I really appreciate ICA’s efforts in terms of being cognizant of the diversity of our scholar population: Me and my colleagues often joke about, when we go into the registration system, there's such a long drop-down menu about how we identify ourselves, and I think it's a very warm gesture from a professional organization. But speaking of what additional things could be organized or offered, my ideas are more about what kinds of conversations we could bring to the table for people to discuss. Speaking from my personal perspective, when it comes to transforming from a student to a assistant professor, I would appreciate some experience or advice from veteran scholars about shaping, or strategically planning, career. As a student, more information about job hunting; for example, how can students best present themselves in the materials that they sent to these positions that they're applying for. Something that would be really helpful is social support in terms of how they deal with rejections. Let's face it, we're going to do that throughout our whole career – starting from the moment we send in a manuscript to a journal, we are going to be rejected many, many times. When I was looking for a job, I found that to be the most difficult aspect: that uncertainty of waiting to hear from these departments. In most of the cases, I heard nothing; there was a silent rejection. Occasionally, I would get a formal rejection letter. General social support and advice from veteran scholars on how to face rejections throughout our career would be very helpful. From the perspective of an assistant professor, I would appreciate advice or information on how I best marry grant-supported research questions with theoretical questions; information and advice on grant-hunting and more of a holistic sharing on how people strategically take their career.
For student listeners, you will be very pleased to know that we have an upcoming episode dealing with rejection and criticism. I've studied in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, and worked in the U.S. and now here in Taipei, and you've mentioned at least Michigan and now you're in Hong Kong. When you're talking about things like grants and strategic career management or career planning, how much of that do you think is affected by where you end up?
That is a great question, because I was trained in the U.S. in a big communication program. My whole training, first of all, was probably the happiest years of my career in academia so far, because I was concerned about doing good research! I read papers and ask research questions, talk to my advisors about research projects that I was very excited about. But when I graduated and started my career in Asia, I found that culturally, universities have different ways to evaluate scholarship. In the U.S. schools are more concerned about, “Are you actively producing papers? We don't care where you publish those papers, but we need to see a healthy line of production.” In Asia, there are a lot more rules. Here in Hong Kong, universities want to have this elaborate quantifiable criteria to evaluate their faculty members, so you have to publish a paper in “this tier” of a journal in order for it to “count”, and you have to be the first author, lead author, or single author. I would say that in Asia, the schools place more emphasis on seeking grants and doing grant-funded research. The connotation of that, is forcing you to do research that would solve “real-world” problems. I can't just be concerned about asking theoretically meaningful questions, I have to find ways to marry theoretical contribution with practical contribution. So, one way that I can learn from established scholars, especially those who are successful at both, is where do they get their inspiration in terms of what they do for their next project? Where do they get ideas for writing grant proposals?
That's fascinating to me because I think I'm your exact opposite: I can't think of a theoretical contribution to save my life! But I know what annoys me in a practical way, and I research it to fix it. I think that's one of the beauties of organizations like ICA: we can meet people who just totally approach things from a different angle. But, I agree that that can be really challenging. It's something I've had to adjust to as well. I was trained in the Dutch PhD system, which teaches you methodological and theoretical rigor. I remember having to be on version sixteen, minimum, of any of my papers, before they ever were even considered possibly “worthy” to send to a journal. And then when I worked in the States, it was much more what you described: all about this production line. It felt very much like a research factory, to have a certain amount of publications out per year in order to meet “X-Y-Z” quotas. It felt very foreign to me as someone trained in the Dutch system, where quality is much heavier emphasized in terms of how you're evaluated as a researcher; it's much more like the Asian system. I also find it fascinating that you really loved your PhD, because to me, that was absolute misery. I value teaching so much, that's my real passion. I research so that they let me teach. It's amazing to me how we all come from these totally different backgrounds in terms of culture, but also in terms of research and training, and why we got into academia; and we can all take advantage of these professional development activities in ways that are unique to us. Like you, I would be really interested in seeing the new and creative ways that ICA uses technology to integrate the virtual and face-to-face to create the ideal hybrid situation. With that we're going to conclude. Thank you, Nancy, for joining us. Please follow us on our social medias.
Thank you so much for having me. To those who are listening. Stay healthy. Stay happy.
As Nancy said, "Stay safe. stay healthy, stay calm."
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Growing Up Comm podcast series, a production of the International Communication Association Podcast Network. Our producers are Christian Elliott and Jo Lampert; Our executive producer is DeVante Brown. The theme music is by Will Van De Crommert. And if you'd like to hear more about the participants in this episode, please check the show notes in the episode description. Signing off until next time, this is Dr. Chrissy Cook – goodbye, now!
