Dr. James Gaudino
Executive Director
National Communication Association
1765 N. Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

RE: LETTER OF REQUEST FOR RUSSIAN COMMUNICATION
AFFILIATION WITH NCA

August 3, 2001

Dear Dr. Gaudino:

We, a group of Russian and American scholars, would like to establish and formalize the relationship between Russian and American communication scholars and educators. To facilitate this collaboration we request that the Russian Communication Association affiliate with the National Communication Association.

The Russian Communication Association (RCA) was established in 2000 as a not-for-profit professional organization with the purpose of promoting communication studies and communication education in Russia through professional collaboration among communication scholars in Russia and abroad.

Specifically, the RCA purposes and objectives are:

• Promoting the development of communication theory and practice as an integral component of social science and practice in Russia
• Promoting communication education in Russia by developing and implementing communication courses and curricula in secondary and higher education institutions
• Establishing professional contacts and relationships with various international professional organizations, including the National Communication Association as one of the oldest and largest professional organizations in the field
• Supporting and disseminating effective models, experiences, and results in communication research and education (both in Russia and the U.S.) by organizing joint conferences and seminars
• Utilizing modern types of communication and information technologies (primarily via the Internet) as a means of developing professional partnerships between RCA members and international colleagues
• Organizing publications of communication materials (including electronic publications)

Today the Association includes over 115 Russian members, who represent various regions and cities in Russia: Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, Tver, Kaluga, Pyatigorsk, St. Petersburg, Stavropol, Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk, etc. In addition, the RCA presently includes about 25 international scholars.

Current RCA projects include:

• publishing an electronic newsletter (in Russian and English)
• creating an RCA-NCA database including Russian and U.S. scholars interested in collaboration
• maintaining two mailing lists: in Russian (for Russian members) mlist_rca@rspu.edu.ru and in English (for the English-speaking Russian and international members) NCA-RCA@yahoogroups.com
• organizing a joint Russian-American communication conference in Pyatigorsk for June 2002
• developing an RCA website.

Current publication of the RCA materials can be found in the Siberian annual journal "Siberia-Philosophy-Education," 2001.

We believe that developing a professional partnership with U.S. colleagues through acquiring an affiliation status would be mutually beneficial for both parties in the following ways:

• politically, by promoting mutual understanding, trust, and collaboration between the two cultures
• educationally, by facilitating the development of a communication component in the Russian education mainstream as well as enriching the U.S. communication curriculum in its intercultural component
• theoretically, by promoting new areas of research, which, in turn, could contribute to various spheres of social practice, such as international business and international relations.

Respectfully,

Olga Matyash, RCA President
oimatyas@accucom.net

Irina Rozina, RCA Vice President, Rostov State Pedagogical University
rozin@aaanet.ru

Olga Leontovich, RCA Coordination Committee, Volgograd State Pedagogical University
olgaleo@mail.vspu.ru

Michail Makarov, RCA Coordination Committee, Tver State University
mmakarov@tversu.ru

Lev Vasiliev, RCA Coordination Committee, Kaluga State Pedagogical University
lev@kspu.kaluga.ru

Steven A. Beebe, Chair - RCA International Committee, Southwest Texas State University
sb03@swt.edu

Robert Ivie, Vice Chair - RCA International Committee, Indiana University
rivie@indiana.edu