01/20/2026

CSCA - Communication Education Interest Group Members ... CFP Reimagining Communication Education through a PACT to Expand the Table

CFPs:

In my role as Forum Editor for Communication Education, I'm launching a new initiative with editor Dr. Narissra Punyanunt-Carter: Reimagining Communication Education through a PACT to Expand the Table.

Communication education is evolving. Our students are changing. Our classrooms are changing. The questions we need to ask are changing. This initiative grows from a simple but urgent belief: communication education will be stronger when more people help shape it.

For too long, conversations about communication education have happened in predictable spaces, among predictable voices, using predictable methods. But the challenges we face—AI in the classroom, shifting student populations, new institutional pressures, evolving literacies—don't have predictable answers. They require us to think differently about what communication education can be. And thinking differently requires hearing from people whose daily experiences, research traditions, institutional contexts, and national cultural norms offer insights we've been missing. We must expand the table because the problems we're trying to solve are bigger than any single methodological or theoretical vantage point—or any single national context—can address.

We're making a PACT: to reimagine communication education by expanding who participates in shaping its future. Through four forums—New Perspectives, New Approaches, New Connections, and New Transformations—we're creating space for voices, methods, and ideas the field needs to hear.

The PACT: Four Forums

• New Perspectives

What questions emerge when we expand who participates in conversations about communication education? What insights become visible when we center scholarship from different institutional contexts, national locations, and cultural traditions? What do we learn when we study populations and contexts that existing research has overlooked? How does crossing geographic, institutional, and disciplinary borders reshape what we think we know about communication education?

• New Approaches

What do experimental designs, advanced quantitative modeling, computational methods, and learning analytics reveal that other approaches cannot? What do interpretive, critical, autoethnographic, participatory, and performance methods each uniquely contribute? How do mixed-methods designs integrate multiple ways of knowing? What becomes knowable when we expand our methodological toolkit?

• New Connections

What are scholars discovering in writing studies, rhetoric, business communication, educational psychology, performance pedagogy, composition, and applied linguistics? What conceptual frameworks from these fields open new possibilities for understanding communication education? What problems facing communication education have already been addressed elsewhere?

• New Transformations

What becomes possible when we reimagine how we teach, assess, and understand learning? How might we respond creatively to the presence of AI in communication classrooms, to changing student needs, to evolving institutional contexts? What would communication education look like if we designed it for the future we want rather than the past we inherited?

What We're Asking

First, submit a 250-500-word proposal outlining:

• Your topic/argument
• Your selected forum (Perspectives, Approaches, Connections, or Transformations)
  • If your work speaks to multiple forums, choose the one that feels most salient; we'll help you find the right fit
• How this helps reimagine communication education and expand our future

If accepted, you'll write:

• ~2,500 words (including references)
• Accessible style that invites dialogue (write to be read widely, not just by specialists)
• Not a traditional research article (though empirical work is welcome)—thought pieces, provocations, teaching reflections, and/or conceptual arguments are invited
• All accepted proposals will undergo peer review before publication. We're committed to working with authors through revision to ensure pieces meet the forum's goals
• All work done in APA 7 format
• Co-authors encouraged

Each forum will feature 4-5 contributions and conclude with a response essay that draws connections across pieces and identifies emergent questions.

How to Submit

Please send your 250-500-word proposal directly to Kyle Vareberg (vareberg@nsuok.edu) with "PACT Forum" in the subject line.

Timeline

• Submit proposals on a rolling basis—we'll respond within 2 weeks
• Priority consideration for proposals received by April 26, 2026
  • Proposals submitted after April 26 will be considered based on space availability
• Full drafts due August 30, 2026
• Forums published beginning in 2027

Have Questions?

I'm happy to discuss ideas before you submit a proposal. If you're reading this and thinking, "this sounds interesting but I'm not sure if my work fits," if you're unsure which forum fits, or if your work is unconventional, I welcome a brief conversation before submission. I'd rather have a conversation than have you self-select out.

This is an invitation to help reimagine what communication education becomes next. Join us in our PACT to expand the table. 

Best regards,

Kyle Vareberg

Dr. Kyle R. Vareberg
Forum Editor, Communication Education
Chair, Communication Education Interest Group, CSCA
Assistant Professor, Northeastern State University | vareberg@nsuok.edu