The ECA Legacy Award for Distinguished IDEA Scholarship recognizes a scholar who has, over the course of a career and through a sustained body of work, demonstrated a firm commitment to inclusivity, diversity, equity, and access. Nominees should have a track record of successful publication and/or production of transformative scholarly work pertaining to social justice and community uplift. This scholarly work must be original research that involves synthesis of information across two or more sub-disciplines within the field of communication, and may be applied, critical-theoretic, theoretic, and/or reflective of the range of proven methods and methodologies within the field of communication (Boyer et al, 2016).

This award is named to both reflect ECA’s legacy of excellence in communication scholarship and praxis, and to regard the world’s dire need to celebrate a legacy of scholarly contributions that have shown us the importance of positive progressive radical change while bringing us even closer to realizing the greatest of our human potential.