General Overview
Thank you for serving as an Area Chair. We appreciate your commitment to the academic community and to our associations. Below are the major Area Chair duties:
► Send out Call for Papers (CFP) for your area
► Respond promptly to submissions
► Create panels of 4 presenters per panel around topics; 3 is acceptable only if scheduling 4 is not feasible.
► Submit your panels to the conference coordinator
► Stay in contact with your panelists (helps to ensure attendance)
NOTE: Ideally, panel moderators should get final copies in advance of the papers to be presented and they should interact with presenters about content in preparing for the conference.
While we welcome fresh approaches to subjects, we also appreciate serious commitment to scholarship and to presenting at the conference.
NOTE: A note about PCA/ACA policy: An organization rule is that we do not read people's papers at the conference, unless the author has registered and paid his/her dues for the conference, regardless of whether he/she acturally attends. For each presenter listed on the program, the organization must pay for AV equipment and hotel space, which ,as you may know, is very expensive. When someone drops out, the time and space may be used for another paper; we ask Chairs to consolidate panels when they have drops that reduces their papers on that panel to less than 3 papers, so that we can schedule another panel in the room. If we don't use a room for the whole or several days of the conference, we can give it back to the hotel and receive credit on our bill. So it's best to consolidate.
For more detailed information, go back to the Area Chair Information page and click on the links or download the Handbook for Area Chairs.