Samantha Chaffin
News Editor
A merger three years in the making is official between the James E. Rogers Department of Communication and the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies.
The merged department will, with one final permission pending, be known as the James E. Rogers Department of Communication, Media and Persuasion according to Department Chair Jim DiSanza.
“I think there’s one final letter [from the State Board of Education] that needs to arrive here,” said DiSanza. “It was pretty much over the summer, we’ve been informed that the merger is pretty much going forward.”
DiSanza said the merger came about three years ago when Dean of the College of Arts & Letters, Kandi Turley-Ames, created an initiative called “Areas of Excellence.” It called for departments to find new, creative ways to do business, educate students and do research.
DiSanza said the merger aims to improve undergraduate and graduate education as well as solve some problems both departments were experiencing.
DiSanza said one problem that will be solved with the merger was having so many classes the departments couldn’t make sure a class was offered each and every year. This resulted in substitutions for classes where DiSanza said departments would prefer not to do those sorts of things.
“Now we have a new curriculum that’s in front of the curriculum council now and that hopefully will be approved for next year,” said DiSanza.
He added, “Every course will be offered at least once a year, easing and speeding students’ paths to graduation.”
The James E. Rogers Department of Mass Communication lost three faculty members this year but DiSanza said those positions will be filled by Fall 2014.
“Not only have all of those positions been approved for searches but we also got approved the ability to hire a person in public relations whom we lost in 2008 during the economic crisis,” said DiSanza. “So we’ve got that position back and we’re really excited. All of the searches are now in progress, there are ads out and we’ll start deliberating [in early November.]”
DiSanza noted the department is excited to start building the Public Relations program, a program he said was typically one of the largest amongst university communication programs.
For students already enrolled as majors in either the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies or the James E. Rogers Department of Mass Communication, DiSanza said the changes would not affect their graduation date.
“There will be some classes [major students] need that will disappear and we will substitute liberally for them, so nobody will be delayed in getting their degree,” said DiSanza. “But there will be some new options that students might want to take and will be excited and enthusiastic about jumping into as well.”
The department heads held informational meetings with students and faculty on Oct. 14 and 15 to answer questions, address concerns and discuss the future of the department. Faculty also participated in the Majors and Minors Fair on Oct. 16 for the first time as a combined department.
“One of the things we’re really hoping with this is to improve undergraduate education and improve our students’ abilities to find and advance in their careers,” said DiSanza. “I’ve long thought that [Mass Communication] students, although well trained in the technical area of their field, if they wanted to advance they needed things like persuasion, argumentation, management-communication, leadership and small group stuff.”
He continued, “And I’ve often thought communication and rhetorical studies students, although they’ve got the broad communication skills, needed some technical skills in order to help them get that entry level job. So from my point of view this benefits the placement and career potential of both [Communication and Rhetorical Studies] and [Mass Communication] students.”
The last element of the merger to be combined is the budget, which DiSanza said will be combined down the road but is no rush as the departments are already sharing resources well.
The department has invested approximately $70,000 to $90,000 in a new 28-station Mac lab. Disanza said the lab will be an added resource to the department in Frazier Hall. and will be equipped with Adobe Creative Suite 6 software and 28 Macintosh computers. The already existing department labs will also be updated to the new Adobe software.
“It will allow us to get more students, and the demand for these intro-level courses is going to go up. This will allow us to teach a greater number of students more efficiently, so we’ll be able to use our resources more efficiently for it so I think it will pay for itself in a really short period of time,” said DiSanza.
The merger will combine the two departments’ resources but will not increase their budgets, according to DiSanza.
Some emphasis areas in both departments were dropped or changed in the proposed curriculum.
“Our goal was consolidate, drop that which was only minimally enrolled, and generally try to find ways to maximize that which we did well. It was very strategic, we were very strategic about it,” said DiSanza. “Drop that which doesn’t have a strong student enrollment and re-emphasize that which we were strongest at. Give students the best education in those areas that we can.”
DiSanza said he would like to see the number of department majors and graduate students double in the next five years.
“We’re really gonna push,” said DiSanza.
