Among my favorite experiences in the City is going to the annual communication symposium at my alma mater – Baruch College, CUNY. As one month has passed already, only eleven months to go till the next one!

This year, The 13th Communication Symposium & Communication-intensive Instruction – focused on story-telling – coincided with my 25th anniversary since graduation. It was also the last symposium under the leadership of Mikhail Gershovich, Ph.D., Executive Director, Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute.

The morning program included the keynote presentation from Catherine Mathis, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, Standard and Poor’s and the roundtable discussion of the idea that stories – or “literacy narratives” – can reveal much about the processes of teaching and learning.

After lunch – an opportunity to network and exchange impressions – the afternoon program started with a fascinating and extremely engaging workshop focused on “Story and Re-Story in the Age of Shape-shifting Portfolio People” led by Barbara Ganley, Community Expressions, and Alan Levine.

The afternoon keynote presentation was given by Suresh Canagarajah, Edwin Erie Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics and English, Penn State University.

Cocktails and dinner were, as in the last few years, at the great Players Club (Gramercy Park South) and the dinner “address” was a conversation with Gary Shteyngart, author of the Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, and A Super Sad True Love Story, interviewed by Roselyn Bernstein, author of Illegal Living and Professor of Journalism and Creative Writing, Baruch College, CUNY.

The symposium and the evening ended with an emotional farewell from Director Mikhail Gershovich, who organized the past ten symposia. He promised to come from California and see us all next year.

The most valuable idea taken from this symposium: how important is not only the story-telling, but also re-telling of the story, to make sure that the receiver understood exactly what the sender of the message MEANT to be understood.

So, among my favorite experiences in the City is going to the annual communication symposium at my alma…

Manuela Michailescu