A Short Note on the Creation of the USIH 4.0 Conference Program

On behalf of the other members of the Conference Committee--Committee Chair Mike O'Connor and Ray Haberski--I just wanted to publicly thank everyone who submitted papers or panels to this years conference. We had a dramatic increase in the number of submissions this year, which was both a blessing and a curse. Mike, Ray, and I strove, first and foremost, to create the best conference we could. This involved creating coherent panels, while making sure that a wide diversity of scholars working on as wide a range of topics as possible were represented.  We're very happy with the result, but we know that many excellent proposals couldn't be fit into the program.  Those accepted--and rejected--from the conference received private notice of their fate a couple weeks ago. But as we are finally able to publish the schedule today, I felt that it was worth adding this little note on the process.