Marcella's Elevate Experience

My first experience at the Central States Communication Association conference, Elevate, was certainly one to be remembered. I attended a G.I.F.T. (Great ideas for teaching) session, 4 panel sessions, and presented a G.I.F.T. with my classmates. I hope to return to another conference in the future as a presenter or just an attendant. This conference is a great way to network, learn, and change the way that you may think about different things.

Drew, Me, & Lexi

On Friday, the first day of the conference, we thought that it would be beneficial for us to attend a G.I.F.T. session because on Saturday we would be presenting our own G.I.F.T., and we thought it would be good to kind of know how the sessions go.  I was very pleasantly surprised by the way the session was set up.  It was a little bit different than I imagined, but it works well for the session.  Basically, in a G.I.F.T. session there are up to ten groups or individuals presenting G.I.F.T.s.  Each group is assigned a table that has six or seven chairs around it for session attenders to sit at, and the attenders have a list in their program of the different G.I.F.T.s that are available to attend at a given session.  The session that we attended was at 11:00 in the morning, and I had the opportunity to hear about five different G.I.F.T.s.  The G.I.F.T.s that I heard were called: Elevating Speech Evaluations through Twitter, Analyzing Target Audience, The Cups Game as Small Group Communication Activity, “Elevating” Students’ Understanding of Communicator Style: How Would Each Communication Style Manage Organizational Conflict?, and Talk Story: Developing Thematic Narratives.  One thing that I noticed at the G.I.F.T. session is that there were no other undergrads presenting G.I.F.T.s.  All of the presenters were grad students or professors.

After the G.I.F.T. session we took a break for lunch, then at 2:00 in the afternoon the three of us chose panels that interested us and attended them.  Drew and I ended up picking the same one: “All Immigrants are Artists”: The Artful Negotiations of Diverse Immigrant Experiences.  During this panel we heard five individuals speak about their experiences as immigrants or as children of immigrants.  The first speaker was Alberto Gonzalez from Bowling Green State University.  He spoke about his work at the non-profit organization called La Conexion.  This is a place that Latinas in Bowling Green, Ohio can go to feel connected to their culture as well as the community they live in.  Gonzalez discussed the issues that La Conexion is facing as it becomes more public and well known because of immigration laws.  Immigrants may come to La Conexion and not have the legal papers to be in the United States.  The second speaker was named Eddah Mutua.  Eddah is from Kenya, Africa.  She spoke about a non-profit that she is involved in called Prairie Garden.  Prairie Garden is a garden that refugee women from Africa work together on.  The garden is in St. Cloud, Minnesota which is also where Eddah teaches.  Prairie Garden allows the women refugees to speak their own languages, grow their own food, and interact with other immigrants.  Eddah described the Prairie Garden as a place where the women can be free to be themselves in their new country.  The third speaker on the panel was Ahmet Atay.  Ahmet Atay spoke about a film director from Italian and Turkey descent who is also queer.  He spoke about how this director is changing the film community with his films.  The fourth panelist was Sunny Lie.  Sunny Lie is a Chinese Indonesian, and she works closely with Chinese Indonesian students who are pursuing higher education in New York City.  She spoke about how even though they try to hang on to their culture and not assimilate to American culture, they show signs of assimilation. The last panelist to speak was David Hanley-Tejeda.  He spoke about being the son of an immigrant.  His mother was Mexican.  She also happened to have schizophrenia. He spoke about her struggles as an immigrant with a mental disorder.  He also shared that she committed suicide, and he shared a poem that he wrote about his experience being his mother’s son.  This panel was interesting and I enjoyed listening to the panelist’s stories.

The next day was our big day to present our G.I.F.T.! We woke up early, got ourselves ready, and went to the room that we were presenting in. We set up the table the way we wanted it to look for our presentation.  I am personally very pleased with the way our presentation went.  Considering we had an early morning eight o’clock session, we had quite a few people show up.  All of the people who sat at our table and listened to our presentation seemed very interested and engaged in what we had to say.  Everyone had questions which is a good thing.  After our G.I.F.T. presentation we each went to two other panels that day.

The first panel that I attended on Saturday was called Elevating from Problems to Solutions: Transformative Theory and Methods in Interracial and Diversity Communication.  I LOVED this panel.  There were four panelists. The first panelist was Rachel Griffin.  She is an interracial black and white women.  She spoke about the binary that American culture is bound by.  The binary between white and black in particular.  The second panelist was Stephanie Young, an interracial Korean American woman.  She also spoke about the binary, but she spoke about putting herself out there in the classroom to help students open up about race and understand race and ethnic identity better.  Then Eddah Mutua spoke as a panelist again.  She spoke about her experience as an African in America and the way that she relates to African Americans as well as white Americans.  The last panelist to speak was Dorothy Pennington who is an African American professor who spoke about her past experiences and how things have changed since she first became a teacher.  She also touched on the idea that some people believe we live in a post racial society.  This panel was very interesting to me.

The second panel that I chose to attend was called Competitive Papers in the Women’s Caucus: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.  There were two panelists who spoke during this panel.  The first one to speak was named Molly C. Turner.  She spoke about Hillary Rodham-Clinton and Bill Clinton.  She expanded upon their different leadership styles and how Hillary has become a role-model for women everywhere in the world.  The next speaker was named Kelly Soczka Kaiser. She spoke about working on a Wisconsin dairy farm and the trials she faces in the farmer community because she is a women. Because of the trials she has personally faced, she decided to conduct a study on other farming women.  She presented her results to the panel as well.

The view from the Hyatt

I learned something important at all of the panels that I attended.  My experience at the Elevate Conference was one that I will never forget.  Not only did I get to experience part of the country that I had never experienced, I also got to experience parts of the Communication Studies field that I had never had the honor to experience.