TYCA Regional Conferences

This is my first post on CCE. I wanted to post briefly on my experience running a TYCA regional conference and ask about other people's experiences at TYCA regionals.

I was program chair and local arrangements chair of this year's TYCA-West conference in Park City, Oct 20-21. We had Sharon Mitchler as our keynote speaker, and she gave an excellent presentation that addressed the changing realities of teaching English in the two-year college.

My overriding impression of my experience was that it was a lot of work. "People volunteer for this?" I asked myself. I then realized that oh, yes, I had volunteered for this. I foolishly took on too much and failed to beg my colleagues for help. My one piece of advice for anyone organizing a regional conference is to form a committee and delegate. I was making name badges, lugging projectors, etc. the night before the conference.

We had about 40 presenters and about 65 total attendees. This was my third TYCA-West, and that seemed like pretty decent attendance. We also had good, non-academic fun in downtown Park City. But since I'm still a relatively new faculty member (I'm in my fourth year of full-time teaching at Salt Lake Community College), I feel like I don't have much perspective.

So here are three questions.

1) How big are other TYCA regionals?
( I suspect that TYCA-West falls in the low end since our region is one of the more sparsely populated ones.)

2) Do other TYCA regional conferences draw people from outside their region?
(We had two participants from Towson University in Maryland and a participant from the U of Illinois Chicago.)

3) How many adjuncts and graduate students attend TYCA regional conferences?
(I made a special effort to contact graduate schools in my region. It worked with Utah State. Cheryl Ball came down with a contingent of about six graduate students. We also had relatively good attendance from adjuncts.)

Comments

[bradley]

I probably won't answer all the questions, but we do a pretty good job, we like to think, in the Pacific NW region, which is mostly Washington and Oregon with a little Montana but we're also charged with serving Alaska, and North Idaho, along British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. (I just stepped down as membership chair and am now the webtender at http://tyca-pnw.org.) That's quite a lot of ground to cover, though not quite as sparse as the West region might cover.

Most of our attendees come from Washington and Oregon, mostly western Oregon and all around Washington, depending upon conference location. Sharon used to be our regional leader and is a great inspiration to our group, plus a great person and teacher.

This year, though I wasn't there, there were about 95 attendees at our conference in Salem, OR, at Chemeketa CC. I can't break down the regular attendees and presenters, nor the adjunct faculty or grad students, though we get quite a few of each. I'll say about a dozen grad students and easily that many adjunct, if not more. We charge adjuncts less, and we charge full-time folks just $65. One thing we do, since we don't have anything as nice as Park City (jealous!) is we hold conferences on campus. This makes the tech situation better. We had one person from BYU Rexburg/Idaho, which would be in the West region technically. There were also a few folks from California this time, though I'm not entirely sure why. Still, it was nice to have them.

I'd be interested in seeing what others have to say. I've heard the SE region holds quite a large conference but I've never heard about any of the others.

[middlebrow]

Thanks for the detailed response, bradley. One thing in particular sticks out: the registration price. Your conference costs less--perhaps because of the economy of scale. Our conference is clearly smaller. Our registration is $145. I would obviously like to see that lowered--though we do charge adjuncts and graduate students $70.

I think the tyca- pacific northwest website is terrific, by the way. In addition to being treasurer, I am also the new webmaster for tyca-west. I just revised the site.
(www.tycawest.org).

[smitchler]

Hi All,

I have a little bit of info that may help. In 2005, the regional conference attendance broke down like this:

Midwest: 170
Northeast: 175
West: 35 - though I know it was more than doubled at this year's conference!
Southwest: 100
Southeast: 150ish (not sure I've got this quite right)
Pacific coast: 125ish (also not sure my notes are correct here...)

Generally speaking, each region has a distinct flavor to the conference it holds. Each one is a unique blend of national and regional issues and traditions.

[middlebrow]

Wow, Sharon. TYCA-West is even smaller than I thought. Now I have TYCA-regional envy.

By the way, folks, next year's TYCA-West conference will be in Vegas. In order to raise attendance at next year's TYCA-West, the organization will be adopting a new saying: "What happens at TYCA-West stays at TYCA-West."

[bradley]

I hope the Vegas conference has a solid CC of Southern Nevada flavor. Are you meeting on one of the campuses? In a casino? I spent five-and-a-half years in Vegas at CCSN. There are some great people there I miss. Tell them to get on the blog here!

[middlebrow]

We had about fifteen people from CCSN at the TYCA-West conference in Park City. I'll definitely tell them about this site. First, I have to get some of my own colleagues at Salt Lake Community College on this blog.

[joanna]

yes, Middlebrow, you do need to get your colleagues on this blog! Over break, I'm going to update the typelists and maybe we should have a TYCA-section and link to each area's website. I'll ask Holly if TYCA-NE has a web page.