Since its beginning as an idea of Alabama professor David Sloan, the Southeast Journalism Conference has worked hard to meet its two original purposes: 1) to encourage greater interest in student journalism and 2) to create closer ties among journalism schools in the Southeast United States.

In November 1985 Sloan wrote a letter proposing a new organization based on those purposes and mailed it to all journalism programs in the South listed in the Journalism Directory, which is published annually by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. By January 1986 about 12 schools had indicated interest in joining, and later that spring Sloan met with representatives from four of those schools at an AEJMC regional meeting in Knoxville, Tenn. It was agreed that the group would use the constitution of the long-established Southwest Journalism Congress as an early model and begin formal operation in the 1986-87 school year.

It was also decided that the SEJC would sponsor two primary annual activities during its formative years - a publications contest and a convention, both for students at member schools. Fifty-one categories of newspaper and magazine writing, editing, layout, photo and advertising competition were set up. One category, an overall sweepstakes trophy for the school with the most awards, was deleted at the 1987 faculty business meeting, leaving 50 regular categories at that time. The convention would be held at the home school of the faculty president, and the faculty vice president would become the president the following year.

By June 1986 Sloan reported that 24 schools from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee had applied for charter membership.

As the first president of SEJC, the University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Byron St. Dizier organized an extensive student publications contest and a three-day inaugural convention set for Feb. 19-21, 1987. St. Dizier estimated that several hundred contest entries were received from 13 schools, and attending the first convention were 60 representatives from Alabama, Alabama-Birmingham, Samford, Middle Tennessee, Austin Peay, Georgia State, Southeastern Louisiana and Northeast Louisiana.

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