Chair & professor completing term as President of Southern States Communication Association

February 19, 2020

Dr. Pamela G. Bourland-Davis, chair and professor of the Communication Arts department at Georgia Southern University, is currently completing her term as president of the Southern States Communication Association. Bourland-Davis said, “It has been an honor to represent the communication discipline in this role. SSCA was one of the first conferences I attended, and I’ve always valued the scholarship and friendships made through the association.”

SSCA promotes “the study, criticism, research, teaching, and application of the artistic, humanistic, and scientific principles of communication,” as stated on its website. SSCA has around 2,000 members from universities and institutions that have communication programs.

Georgia Southern University’s Department of Communication Arts has had a long history of supporting SSCA, and currently, Dr. Abby Brooks chairs the group’s Resource Committee, and Dr. Pat Wheaton will be moving into the role of chair of the Finance Committee. Faculty have also served as chairs of multiple divisions including public relations, mass communication, political communication, and argumentation and forensics. Of particular note, Georgia Southern has had students represented at the Undergraduate Honors Conference, based on competitive reviews of their papers, for at least twenty years consecutively.

Prior to this year, as first vice president, Bourland-Davis planned the Montgomery, AL, 2019 conference under the theme of “Conflict and Crisis at the Crossroads of Change,” which allowed attendees to explore a variety of communication topics especially those which aligned with Montgomery’s role in the Civil Rights Movement. And as second vice president, she
coordinated the Theodore Clevenger Undergraduate Honors Conference, held as part of the 2018 Nashville Conference.

Bourland-Davis has also served six years as the advertising and exhibit manager for the SSCA. She chaired the Public Relations Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and she served two terms on AEJMC’s Finance Committee. Other offices she has held were with the Educators Academy of Public Relations Society of America
and the Public Relations Division of the National Communication Association. Currently she is also on the editorial board for the Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Public Relations Education and Journal of Public Interest Communication.