Arabella Lyon Is New RSA Membership Officer

It is my pleasure to announce that the RSA Board has invited Arabella Lyon to become the next RSA Membership Officer-and that she has accepted the position for an initial three-year period. 

She succeeds Debra Hawhee, who has served admirably for several years as Membership Officer and who is assuming the role of editor of RSQ's special fifth issue, now in the planning stages.  Under Debbie's leadership RSA grew its membership numbers substantially, and the Society has benefited in many ways from her wise counsel. Debbie and Arabella are now working out a transition, which is expected to be complete about the time that school begins. 

Arabella Lyon attended her first RSA conference at Arlington in the late 1980s before graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Communication. She currently is a member of the faculty in English at SUNY-Buffalo, and serves as president of the SUNY Council of Writing, an organization representing the sixty-two campuses with first-year writing programs.  Her research interests include deliberation, human rights, feminist rhetorics, and Chinese communication, and her work on China has been supported by a Fulbright year in China, three NEH seminars, and a year of teaching in Singapore. Her book, Intentions: Negotiated, Contested, and Ignored, received the Ross Winterowd Award, and her many articles have appeared in Philosophy and Rhetoric, College English, College Composition and Communication, and  other journals and collections. 

RSA is fortunate to have Arabella serving in this role.  The Board will welcome her first reports at its meeting in Chicago in November. 

Jack Selzer
RSA President