Semester Recap: Reflecting on my time with the Communication Graduate Students' Association

Apparently it’s April 4th already… the semester literally (as in the way that Rob Lowe says literally on Parks & Rec literally) flew by. As per usual, a lot happened over the past few months - from teaching to conferences, papers to publications, and other projects - and I think it’s important to take some time to reflect on the goals that I set for the past few months and what I accomplished.

A good place to start this reflection off is by taking a look back at my involvement with the Communication Graduate Students’ Association (CGSA). I have served on the CGSA for the past three years of my academic studies, first as Executive VP (2018-2019), then Co-President (2019-2020), and finally President (2020-2021). Having fondly remembered CGSA events during my Master’s degree and inspired by my extracurricular involvement at Queen’s University - and the community that existed among its faculty and students - I was excited to work towards creating a similar environment at the Department of Communication.

Like many associations, businesses and groups, COVID-19 meant going virtual for the CGSA. We had to find a way to engage, connect with and meet the demands of current students when we could no longer get together in person and a way to connect with incoming and prospective students to answer questions they had about the program and welcome them to the UOttawa community. Below is a brief summary of some of the initiatives that the CGSA pursued over the past year to achieve these goals:

COMMUNICATION WITH STUDENTS

In order to facilitate communication with prospective and current students, with the goal of providing them with a one-stop shop-of-sorts where they could either find pertinent information for succeeding in grad studies, former VP Finance Nathalie Waldschmidt and I worked to build and launch the CGSA’s own website. Our goal was to create a resource where students could get access to information they needed when they needed it. While much of this exists on the University’s website, it is found on several sub-sections of the site and not necessarily easy to find. The new CGSA site was launched in time for a virtual Welcome Day organized for incoming students and updated regularly throughout the year.

The next big piece of the puzzle - which took nearly 4 months to work through the red tape - was creating listservs (or distribution lists) for students enrolled in the three different programs of the Department of Communication. When the lists finally went live in the Fall 2020 semester, it meant that information could be sent directly from faculty and students TO students, pretty much instantly.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Another tool that we used for communicating with students was social media. In addition to maintaining our presence on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (and managing two private Facebook groups), the CGSA grew its reach by launching on two additional platforms - LinkedIn and YouTube.

The CGSA YouTube Channel became a virtual home for all of the events and workshops that we organized this past year. We’ve launched several sub-channels to highlight these initiatives - InterCOMM, the Communication Lecture Series, and the Graduate Student Workshops, among others.

Our outgoing VP Communications, Thierry Njomgang Ngompo, led the charge to develop and launch the CGSA’s LinkedIn presence to foster professional networking opportunities for students, faculty and alumni. The CGSA’s LinkedIn profile went live in late Fall 2020 and its group in early January 2021.

GOVERNANCE

A HUGE initiative that we undertook in the Fall 2020 semester was updating our by-laws. In particular, we made two big changes :

Growing our team: The number of positions on the CGSA was expanded from 5 to 11, creating specific portfolios (such as VP Communications), representatives for first-year students in the Masters and PhD programs, as well as in the MComm program, and officially recognizing that the CGSA represents both Masters and PhD students by creating two equivalent Co-President positions.
Updating our election cycle: We realized last summer that the election cycle, which normally takes place only in the Fall semester, did not ensure the continuity of the CGSA. If all outgoing Executives were to graduate in the summer semester, not only would there be no transition but there would also be no one to run the elections for the next year. As such, the by-laws were amended to allow for two election periods: one at the end of the Winter semester for upper year representatives and one at the beginning of the Fall semester to fill first-year positions.

EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS

COVID didn’t slow the CGSA down - if anything, it was a motivator to ramp up online events and activities to ensure that students stayed connected with each other and with the Department. We hopped online with a Zoom account as soon as COVID hit last year in order to meet virtually for weekly (and then eventually bi-weekly) Happy Hours, movie nights and game nights, as well as to organize co-working sessions over the summer months and throughout the academic year.

The CGSA was also very fortunate to partner with several different groups in the Department of Communication to launch targeted events for the University of Ottawa community, including:

Graduate Studies Series: Working with the VP Senior Affairs of the undergraduate Communication Students’ Association (CSA), Gab Duff, a two-part series was launched to provide information to undergrad and graduate students about pursuing (further) graduate studies. The series featured two events - one with a panel of current students talking about their experience as grad students and why they chose to pursue them, and another with staff from the Faculty of Arts who went through nitty-gritty details of the application process.
Job Talks Series: Also in collaboration with the CSA (Gab Duff) and part-time professor Jean-Sébastien Marier, the CSA-CGSA launched their inaugural Job Talks series. The four-part series featured alumni from the University of Ottawa, working in a variety of communication-related fields including journalism and public relations, and in a variety of industries including the not-for-profit and public sectors. The events allowed students to learn more about the diverse career paths and opportunities available in communications.
Lunch-Hour Graduate Students’ Workshop Series: In collaboration with the Graduate Studies Committee of the Department of Communication, under the leadership of Professor Meredith Rocchi, the CGSA helped to launch a monthly workshop series, touching on a variety of topics and featuring specialized presenters, to help graduate students navigate life during their studies. Among other topics, presentations touched on the supervisor-supervisee relationship (and how to find one), funding applications, resumes and websites, work-life balance, and knowledge mobilization.

And this was only the tip of the event iceberg! Other events included collaborating on the Department of Communication’s COMMUNICATION Lecture Series, featuring short presentations from faculty members on their current research, as well as conference and defence rehearsals, and the 8-week intensive external funding workshop.

Lastly, the CGSA’s VP Academic (and new Co-President (PhD)), Eliza Sylvia, grew the Association’s annual conference, InterCOMM, from a half-day event into a hugely successful two-day virtual conference, featuring its first-ever keynote speaker, panels on student success as well as academic research, and its very first all-undergraduate panel in the field of popular culture!

Thank you, next

As I start to look more and more to what’s coming next - focusing on and finishing off the dissertation; finalizing two book chapters, a couple of articles and a book review; wrapping up teaching and grading for the Winter semester; sitting on the APTPUO Bargaining Committee; and starting the post-PhD job hunt - I’ll fondly remember my time volunteering with the CGSA. Among other things, it’s allowed me to meet so many passionate, interesting and smart people, many of whom I now get to call friends and colleagues.

Volunteering, in any association but especially in an organization that works directly with and to support students, is a very rewarding experience whose impact is felt immediately. I would encourage current and future graduate (and undergraduate) students to get involved on campus and in campus-related activities.

In closing, I also know that I’m leaving the CGSA in very capable hands and I’m excited to see how the Association grows under their leadership.✌️