Change is Integral to Improvement
By Will Norton Jr.
Dean
The year 2003 was very good for this college.
- We hired Susan Gage, Mary Kay Quinlan and Jerry Sass Jr.
- The campaigns classes continued to improve, producing several truly spectacular campaigns last year.
- The Cuba depth report was nominated for a Pulitzer.
- The business writing program was added to the college
- Distance learning facilities and instruction were developed further.
- Faculty voted to restructure the college through elimination of departments and adoption of a new set of basic courses for all majors
- We continued to renovate and furnish Andersen Hall.
- The quality of the students improved, both professionally and academically.
- The ACEJMC site-visit team spent three days on campus in early February and gave us a good report.
This has been a time of continuing improvement. But, of course, we always have challenges to address. First, we have to provide professional opportunities for senior faculty who have taught a long time but have not worked recently in the media. I am concerned that faculty who have not practiced in the field for more than a decade are not up to date on media practices. They may not have a sense of what is going on in their professions. They need to return to the practice of the profession on a regular basis in order to keep in touch with those areas for which we are preparing students.
I am proposing a faculty development leave policy that will enable faculty to return to the newsroom, production facility or advertising agency for a semester or a summer to bring themselves up to date.
Related to this challenge is the number of faculty who will be nearing retirement age in the next few years.
We want to continue to encourage our faculty to do media scholarship and want to find ways to enhance scholarship. As one step toward that goal, associate dean Linda Shipley has taken over primary responsibility for the graduate program and for improving scholarship. She will meet with each faculty member to ascertain what the college can do to help with that person's scholarship. This is vital for the future of this college.
Michael Goff, assistant professor, has been appointed interim assistant dean. He is responsible for paperwork and administrative detail concerning the undergraduate program. It is a non-tenure track position.
The college today is led by faculty initiatives and faculty governance. The remarkable changes in the college structure and curriculum have been driven by faculty proposals and requests. Clearly, the faculty have enabled this college to improve dramatically.
That kind of faculty leadership will be important in the months ahead as we go through revision of bylaws and policies and procedures and changes in faculty and administration.
Searches are under way for people to teach visual literacy as well as to fill open slots in the advertising sequence. One of those slots opened when Professor Michael Goff moved to the dean's office as interim assistant dean for undergraduate studies.
I trust that our college faculty will continue to speak on principle, openly debating all sides of the issues before coming to conclusions. The faculty's actions in the last 14 years have established a pattern of reasonable policy-setting that has enabled the college to improve.
Clearly, faculty understand how governance works and are working effectively to make certain that open discussion thrives and that the wishes of the majority of the faculty are implemented by the administration of the college.
Because these are uncommonly difficult times in higher education, we need to continue to focus on what is best for our students and for the college as a whole.
The faculty really is the college. The faculty set policies, and the administration merely effects those policies. We must continue to be a faculty-driven college if we are to prevail in dealing with the serious challenges that will severely test us in the months and years ahead.
Despite difficult budgetary issues, this college, this faculty, is on the threshold of a golden age.
