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President’s Corner

Tony DeMars, April 2021

I wrote my first President’s Corner two years ago. The impact of COVID-19 makes my last one unusual, since my term as president should have ended a year ago. I actually wrote ‘my last President’s Corner’ a year ago, and then the BEA Board of Directors decided it would be best for the organization to freeze all the upper leadership positions, and I agreed to stay in place for an extra year. Surprisingly, the year has gone quite quickly. I write this as I wrap up my tenure and turn the reins over to Vic Costello. BEA has great people lined up to be our next leaders.

I have not had the chance to have a typical president’s experience, starting with the 2020 and 2021 conferences being virtual, but also because of having to do virtual business meetings. As one example of the good side of that, however, the lemonade we made from those lemons was that we were able to bring in past presidents virtually for some discussion and input sessions, and we were able to do association business online quite easily. I also like to think of us all as equal; my role has just been to moderate business meetings and organization activities. So, I spent the past year trying to highlight some of our BEA members, and I like how that has gone. Within this also, I recognize on a daily basis that Heather Birks and J-D Boyle do so much behind the scenes to make everything run smoothly.

A bottom-line reality I am happy about is that BEA has actually accomplished a lot this year:

One, we got a million-dollar grant from the King Family Foundation to put the BEA Festival on a solid financial ground for years to come.

Two, we made important progress for Diversity and Inclusion. BEA’s D&I Committee has done good things for some years, but our addition of the BEA Faculty Fellow position, George Daniels’ leadership, and the related development of the BEA Diversity & Inclusion Task Force have us on the right track for progress with diversity, equity and inclusion.

Three, we established BEA Pop-Ups and did some important discussions and sessions, and have laid the foundation for being able to make these a regular component of BEA. I can’t imagine benefiting from virtual-only conferences as the dominant future model, but I see the potential for hybrid being the standard of the future—with online sessions supplementing what we do face-to-face. In relation, we’ve done a year with 2020 BEA Virtual Vegas, the fall 2020 On Location, and BEA 2021 as well run, robust virtual conferences. We have extraordinary leadership in the BEA office and in our member leadership that made this all work very well, so thanks to everyone for what you do to contribute to our collective success.

Four, thanks in large part to the efforts of past-president Augie Grant, we started the BEA Research Grant Endowment to provide financial support opportunities for media-related research projects. This is also a great time to remind you about the 3-1 Research Grant Match(That means a $100 donation actually brings the research grant $400!) —please make a new or additional donation now so we can start awarding these grants this fall. Log in to the BEA website, go to Online Store, then BEA Research Grant.

Five, I’m also very happy to have helped start BEA Latin America. We had a good conference in fall 2019 in Mérida, Mexico, with plans for biennial meetings in a variety of Latin American locations. Thanks to the commitment of members like José Soto at DePaul University and Julian Rodriguez at the University of Texas at Arlington, BEA-LA still has traction. COVID made fall 2021 impossible, but we’ll be in Bogatá, Colombia in fall 2022.

While many of our elected politicians spend too much energy playing politics, a good thing about working with all of you is, instead of that being our focus, we embrace our differences and find cooperative means of having a rich and engaging professional development experience through BEA. We’re great at research, teaching, service and creative scholarship. Thanks to everyone for your friendship and for helping make my time ‘piloting the ship’ such an enriching experience. Life is short; live each day to its fullest.

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