Agarwal Earns Presidential Citation Award From National Communication Association

By SU Public Relations

SALISBURY, MD---Dr. Vinita Agarwal, professor of communication at Salisbury University, recently received the National Communication Association’s (NCA) Presidential Citation Award for her work as the organization’s Teaching and Learning Council (TLC) chair from 2021-23.

“Dr. Agarwal served as chair of the Teaching and Learning Council and a member of NCA's Executive Committee during a crucial period of our association's history - one characterized by a deep commitment to our values of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and access,” said Dr. Walid Afifi, immediate past president of the NCA. “Her leadership exemplified what a commitment to those values can look like and made an important impact on our association's progress on those fronts.”

During her term, Agarwal helped guide the TLC toward goals of creating conditions to support and empower members, and to promote the value of communication. She helped craft a resolution supporting the foundational communication course in U.S. college and university core requirements. Agarwal presented the Foundational Course Resolution before NCA’s Legislative Assembly in April 2023. The resolution had overwhelming support and was approved by the governing body.  Along with the council members, she helped develop a proposal for the NCA Communication Pedagogy Grant for NCA funded programs that was subsequently approved and worked to integrate pedagogy with scholarship for educators.  As chair of the TLC, her efforts foregrounded her commitment to inclusivity, and social justice for marginalized and non-traditional communities in all the TLC’s initiatives such as the annual teaching awards.

“It was an immense honor to serve as chair of the Teaching and Learning Council and as a member of the executive committee of my discipline,” said Agarwal. “During my tenure as chair, we were witness to, and grappled with, fundamental shifts in higher education landscape that shaped how Communication educators and pedagogy responded to and engaged with in material and immediate ways.

“The TLC addressed these shifts head-on, from the post-COVID-19 shift to online education and back to in-person contexts, to the social movements ranging from #MeToo and the Black Lives Matter movement, to negotiating conversations on social justice, affirmative action, and climate change on campuses — through brainstorming actionable ways to support Communication educators and faculty at all levels. It was a privilege to be a part of such an inspirational and thoughtful group of colleagues in grappling with these issues.”

The NCA is a not-for-profit, membership-based scholarly society founded in 1914. Its mission is to advance communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific and aesthetic inquiry.

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