About This Journal
Founded in 1972, the Association for Communication Administration Bulletin (commonly abbreviated ACA Bulletin) served as the official periodical of the Association for Communication Administration, a professional home for department chairs, program directors, and other academic leaders in speech and communication studies.A Chronicle of Communication Leadership
From Volume 11 (August 1975) through Volume 21 (October 1992) the periodical bore the title Association for Communication Administration Bulletin. In 1993 it was relaunched as the Journal of the Association for Communication Administration (JACA), beginning with Volume 22. Although modest in size, the ACA Bulletin was among the first scholarly venues devoted specifically to the practice of academic administration within the communication discipline. Its pages illuminated everyday challenges such as course scheduling, budgeting, faculty governance, technological change, that larger research journals often overlooked. Today, the 1975‑1992 issues are a primary‑source for historians of higher education and for anyone tracing the evolution of U.S. communication programs during an era of enrollment surges, fiscal constraints, and the dawn of the personal computer.2025 Digitization and Metadata Initiative
Throughout 2025 we will be posting fully digitized editions of the Association for Communication Administration Bulletin and its companion title, the Bulletin of the Association of Departments & Administrators in Speech Communication. Each article will be assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and complete metadata records will be added to enhance discovery. Because many original pieces lacked abstracts, we are employing state‑of‑the‑art AI tools to generate concise summaries for indexing and search‑engine retrieval. If you spot an error or have questions about the archive, please contact the current editor of the Journal of the Association for Communication Administration or reach out directly to the Association for Communication Administration.Making Sense of Volume vs. Issue Numbers
- 1972–1992 (Bulletins). Each bulletin functioned as an independent monograph, so the volume number and issue were effectively the same thing. This explains why the sequence climbed to the 80s in just two decades.
- 1993–present (JACA). The journal shifted to a traditional annual volume with one to three separately numbered issues (Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3) inside each volume. Missing publication years mean the numerical gap between 1993 and the present is smaller than the calendar gap.
| Years | Title | Volume Range | Numbering Logic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1972–1975 | Bulletin of the Association of Departments & Administrators in Speech Communication (BADASC) | Vols. 1–10 | Each standalone bulletin was labelled a “volume,” so multiple volumes could appear in a single calendar year. |
| 1975–1992 | Association for Communication Administration Bulletin (ACA Bulletin) | Vols. 11–82 | The ACA retained the sequential count it inherited from BADASC. Citations confirm issues such as Vol. 13 (1975), Vol. 46 (1983), Vol. 65 (1988), and Vol. 73 (1990). |
| 1993–present | Journal of the Association for Communication Administration (JACA) | Vols. 22–41 | In 1993 editors adopted the standard “one volume per publication year” model and reset the count to Volume 22, marking the journal’s 22nd year. Because some years passed without publication, the most recent release is Volume 41 (2024). |
Copyright
For articles published 1972 – 1992 (including titles of the Association for Communication Administration Bulletin and the Bulletin of the Association of Departments & Administrators in Speech Communication)
- Copyright: © Association for Communication Administration (ACA).
- Open-access status: The ACA is making the full back-catalog openly readable online.
Permitted without further permission
- Reading or downloading the PDF for personal research, study, or classroom use
Permission required
- Re-publishing, posting on third-party platforms, or distributing large batches
- Translating, adapting, or creating derivative works
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To request permission, write to ACA leadership at communicationadministrators.org.
