In the summer of 1999, I was just starting my doctoral program at Virginia Tech. My advisor Mark Sanders, who many of you know, highly suggested I drive up to Ferris State University for this IGAEA conference. The idea of driving to Michigan in an old Pathfinder that did not have air conditioning did not excite me. Nor did the idea of staying in a dorm without air conditioning. Nonetheless, I drove up to Ferris State University and it was the first of many IGAEA/GCEA conference for me. While at my first conference I definitely felt a little out of place, but I soon got over that and was welcomed by the members and I am still friends with several of those members that I first met at my first conference. The conference was very exciting to me. I was just getting into teaching, and it gave me a lot of ideas to bring to the classroom. More importantly I think it provided the social context and the peer interaction that I truly value at conferences still today. To me a conference is not just about the presentations, but also about the face-to-face interaction and discussions that take place between the attendees.

Since going to that first conference, I have been to many more and loved each of the conferences I have been to. I have been to conferences in Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Nevada, Texas, and this summer I am looking forward to being in Rhode Island. As many of the old members might remember, I saw the USA the IGAEA way.

Certainly, times have changed. The conferences no longer have a youth program, or really a spouse program, but that has not impacted the quality of each of the conferences I have been to. I love seeing old friends, making new friends, socializing over some ice cream, grabbing a quick breakfast in the cafeteria, learning something during a presentation, or having a late-night drink in the dorms. All of these elements make up a GCEA conference.

Unfortunately, Covid had a huge impact on our organization, not only with conferences but also membership. Our membership numbers are currently at some of the lowest they have ever been, though this decline in membership actually started before Covid. As President I look at our dwindling numbers and I wonder if we are no longer relevant as an organization for teachers?

With that in mind the GCEA Board voted to approve additional funding for the conference this summer and we came up with the cost of $50 for any paid member. This is the cheapest a conference has ever been for our members, but we are still having a hard time getting folks to register. As I write this, we only have 18 registered attendees, and most of those are Board members and presenters. I am really at a loss at the low numbers, but again I ask myself is GCEA still relevant?

I know we are all busy in our own worlds. We have families, vacations, work, school, and all sorts of things going on, but we used to find the time to make these five-day conferences work during the summer. Sadly, it seems the number of interested conference attendees continues to drop and if this year’s conference only ends up with 25 attendees or so, the writing may be on the wall, to not keep having conferences in the future.

The GCEA Board has already looked at creating a strategic partnership with PGSF and will provide more information on that at the conference. As a stand-alone organization we just do not have the resources to continue on our own, and PGSF will provide the partnership GCEA needs to continue being a worthwhile organization dedicated to graphic communication education. This partnership will hopefully help GCEA become more relevant, but I do not think it will help future conferences if members do not attend.

With all that said, you still have a chance to make this year’s conference relevant. We will be taking registrations through June 4th, 2023. We have to provide the final number of attendees to Rhode Island School of Design on June 5th. I really do not want this to be the last conference GCEA holds in its current form, but if it is, we are going to make it great for those who attend. So, if you are registered get ready for an awesome conference that will include a full day of hands-on activities with Frank Romano at the Museum of Printing (https://museumofprinting.org/).

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note at [email protected] 

I hope this is not the writing on the wall that foreshadows the end of the GCEA conference, but we really need to have many more attendees to make this worthwhile. And if a conference registration fee of $50 does not entice you to attend, then next year’s conference registration fee of $500 definitely will not.

Please follow this link to register today: https://gceaonline.org/2023conference/