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As a journalist, I learned to be skeptical and questioning, but sought to be neither a cynic nor a cheerleader. Things are rarely as good as you might wistfully hope, nor as bad as you might timorously fear. Here’s my assessment of how the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies is faring in 2009. I hope you find it realistic, but heartening.
As we approach midyear, there are reasons to be positive and hopeful about our college, regardless of how difficult the past year has been. We have tightened and trimmed, nipped and tucked. We pinch pennies and turn out the lights. I even print on the back side of scratch paper, an old habit acquired in my days as a correspondent in the Soviet Union where budgets and supplies were really tight and we pinched kopecks. Yet, here in the college, our glass and our prospects are more than half full.
No doubt you have heard about the cuts sustained by the university, diminishing its allocation of state funding by $55 million in the fiscal year now drawing to a close. A substantial portion of those cuts has been absorbed by the colleges. Our share, after a sequence of reductions during the year, has reduced the college’s funds by $760,365. That works out to just over 15 percent of our working budget. Moreover, these are cuts that will lower our baseline budget allocation for the coming year.
The university and its colleges may gain some relief from federal stimulus funds, though at the time of this writing that remains unclear. Even if the political divide between the governor and the state legislature is bridged, stimulus funds won’t be a cure-all. They are limited in duration and application. President Harris Pastides, who has been confronted with an unparalleled fiscal crisis in his first year in office, has clearly — and correctly, I think — challenged us to find creative ways to put any stimulus funds to the betterment of the university without creating recurring funding commitments when the stimulus is consumed. In other words, stimulus funds won’t be used to restore what’s already been cut. That would not serve our long-term interests.
How are we coping? The obvious things — curbing expenditures for travel, supplies, phones, and equipment — only get you so far. Technology for teaching and research also demands staying current with hardware and software. Beyond a strict frugality, we had to make other changes. Most came at the staff level, eliminating a number of positions. A long-time continuing education unit was closed. Recently created support positions — a publications coordinator, a research coordinator, one tech support person — were eliminated through what we call a reduction in force (RIF). Two part-time contracts were terminated. Everyone else pitched in to tie up loose ends.
Every effort has been made to trim in ways that do not have a discernible impact on our primary responsibilities of teaching and research. Students, we hoped, would barely notice. True, there might be an extra student or two in a class. An elective course might be offered less often. We’ve been meticulous about scheduling to ensure that classes are close to capacity but conform to our accrediting standards, adjunct faculty fill true needs rather than convenience, and faculty can meet their commitments to both teaching and research. Above all, the academic core had to be undisturbed.
 The problem with scratching positions off a chart is that people occupy those positions. Those people are colleagues — some of long standing — and often friends.
There is no joy in telling someone that “we like you and we like your work, but your position has been eliminated.” I’ve had to do that too often — once is too often — this year. Fortunately, some have moved on to other positions in the university. One has retired. One was hired by one of our alumni. Adversity truly is a window to opportunity.
Nor have we barred the door and hunkered down. Our first priority was to assess our academic needs, particularly for tenure and tenure track faculty. We started this academic year back in August with new colleagues in both schools. Dr. Paul Solomon and Dr. Kendra Albright joined the School of Library and Information Science.
Elise Lewis came aboard in January. Dr. Tom Weir, Dr. Glenda Alvarado and Denise McGill are new faculty members in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Dr. Carol Pardun became director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications in August, joining us from Middle Tennessee State where she was also director of the mass communications program. Dr. Pardun is incoming national president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC). Dr. Shirley Staples Carter, having completed a five-year term as the school’s director, remains with us as a professor, bolstering our senior faculty ranks.
Despite the university’s budgetary constraints, we made a persuasive case for hiring two faculty members for the journalism school for the coming year. Dr. Seihill Kim will join us from Auburn as an associate professor. Dr. Kathy Forde is an incoming assistant professor from Minnesota. We hope this coming summer to launch searches for two faculty members for SLIS.
SLIS, for the first time, has undergraduate students majoring in our new bachelor of science degree in Information Science. As Dr. Hastings frequently reminds us, this is a burgeoning field with “real jobs” in the organization and distribution of information. According to CareerBuilder.com, three of the top growing job markets are Information Science based--database administrators, management analysts, and network systems and data communication analysts. Or as U.S. News and World Report suggests, “an under-the-radar career that is core to the digital enterprise is data miner.” Our undergraduate degree follows the introduction of a Ph.D. program a year earlier, with a second class of doctoral students now being admitted for Fall 2009. New degree programs are not created whimsically. The wings on the house — Davis College — were carefully built to surround our successful masters program. Our specialization in School Library Media is again ranked #2 nationally in the U.S. News Best Graduate Schools 2010 rankings. Our school’s program ranked 17th overall nationally, up two positions from last year and just in the second year of our offering a doctoral degree.
The first graduate student in the college’s interdisciplinary health communications certificate program enrolled this semester, a semester earlier than we expected to launch. Both our schools — SLIS and SJMC — and the Arnold School of Public Health have joined to create the program which is also targeted on a jobs growth area.
SLIS has long been the de facto library and information science school for the state of Maine, which has no such graduate program. We typically begin a Maine cohort every two or three years. But this fall we are expanding to a New England cohort, providing the same blended program of distance and on-site teaching to Vermont and New Hampshire that we have been providing Maine since 1994. Distinguished dean emeritus Fred Roper, who initiated the Maine program, has led our effort to expand the program to those neighboring states.
 Total enrollment in the college this fall was 1,867 students. (See box.) Fall enrollment is our benchmark. Several factors contribute to annual variations in enrollment. December graduation typically thins the ranks for spring. January entries fluctuate. The cycle of distance education cohorts in SLIS raises enrollment when a new group begins the masters program.
The rapid growth of SJMC undergraduate enrollment between
1999 and 2003, when we went from about 1,000 students to
1,500 students, has tapered off. To moderate
enrollment and enhance quality, in 2004 we raised the GPA
required for continuing in the school. As a result,
a small number of students leave the school each year for
academic reasons. We had not, though, anticipated
the crisis in media that is currently reducing the ranks
of fellow journalists at newspapers and broadcast newsrooms. Nor
had we foreseen the broader fiscal collapse that we’ve
witnessed over the past year or so. Who had?
Not surprisingly, prospective students come to us asking if there will be jobs when they graduate. We reasonably believe there will be jobs. They just won’t be the same jobs that are now being eliminated. The new jobs, already evident, are in multimedia. A journalist is now expected to not only write, but to take pictures and post to the web. Advertising is about creating and selling ads across platforms. A written public relations release is a 20th century artifact. Post it, e-mail it, twitter it. That we certainly have foreseen. Our emphasis on media convergence has been part of the school’s mantra for years. Newsplex — our multimedia news laboratory — has never been busier.
And though undergraduate enrollment is off, partly due to the uncertainty in media, we have been aggressively promoting our programs that will prepare graduates for roles in the new media environment. News directors and editors routinely tell us that our students are better prepared than those coming from other institutions.
We won’t know the exact size of our incoming undergraduate class until the freshmen show up in August. But
we also used some admittedly elementary
recruiting efforts — Dr. Pardun and I sent more than 600 hand-written notes to students who’d applied indicating an interest in the school. The post cards work. We believe there will be students on campus in the fall because they received personal attention. That continues in the capable hands of our professional advisers and a faculty that has a deserved reputation for taking a personal interest in students.
Carolina Scholars and McNair Scholars — the top awards for in-state and out-of-state entering undergraduates — will be among our students, as they typically are every year.
 The Boudreaux Group of Columbia has been selected as the architectural firm to design the renovation of the current Health Sciences building as the future home of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. It may house the college’s administrative offices, as well. The building needs a new name.
Boudreaux’s architects have met with faculty, staff and students to gain insights into what will make the building functional, facile and even fun. Because the building lies within the historic Horseshoe district, we have certain design criteria to meet. It’s perhaps the university’s classiest neighborhood. The Pastides live just around the corner in the President’s House. We expect the design process to be completed by the end of 2009. We will keep you posted through our monthly eNews reports on the timetable and progress. But there are a couple of visual concepts on these pages that suggest how we might retain the building’s architectural integrity while creating an excitement for 21st century communications.
Dr. Pardun and I are excited about the prospects of getting the school’s long delayed move back on track. Boudreaux has considerable experience in renovations and in university projects, including the Inn at USC and the university’s West Quad, perhaps now better known as the “green quad.” Our building will also meet specifications for the “green” designation.
Yes, we are all mindful that the journalism school has a history — and I have a two-foot stack of files — of building plans that never materialized. On this one, perhaps I am a cheerleader, but I believe we have a different commitment this time, one that is not tied to external conditions and funding. Keep the faith with me.
I’m always impressed that our alumni and friends keep the faith with this college and have great pride in it. Every gift stands out in its own way, no matter how small or large. One recent gift struck us with its particular timeliness.
Alumnus Ken Baldwin, already a major donor for the SJMC
building, was on the money when he came to us with a proposal
to endow a fund supporting studies in business journalism. As banks were crashing, markets plunging, and a recession gaining speed, we crafted a half-million dollar endowment in Ken’s name that will fund lectures, visiting professionals and other means for enhancing our students’ understanding of business and finance as critical reporting areas. We announced and launched the endowment with a business panel during this spring’s I-Comm Week.
I fully appreciate the merits of our students acquiring reporting specialties. I had one college economics course, but for a decade as a White House correspondent was responsible for reporting on the federal budget. Even a small town general assignment reporter needs to understand the forces behind business failures, mortgage defaults, bankruptcies and the price of gas. As for students who want to be sports or fashion or entertainment reporters, those are businesses, first and foremost.
We’ll tell you more about this great enhancement to our program as we move along and it takes shape.
In the current fiscal year through March, we have received
gifts and pledges from 516 alumni and friends. Those total $1,250,666.79. We are grateful that so many recognize the value of contributing to our students’ education and experience. With today’s financial strains, we have more students seeking financial aid than ever before. We have not been able to help them all. Scholarship funds will always be vital and valued. We’ll never have enough. We can use gifts that will make endowed scholarships grow, but we can also use gifts that can immediately be allocated to scholarships and graduate fellowships.
The IFRA Newsplex, now in its seventh year as our multimedia news laboratory, has never been busier. It’s on track this year for the first time to attract more than $250,000 in grants and contracts. Big time.
Or BGTime, as in Bridging Generations through Technology, Information, Media and Engagement. That’s the name of the multi-year grant funded by the Knight Foundation and the Central Carolina Community Foundation. We’re training USC and Benedict College students at Newsplex to work with Columbia-area senior centers to use new media for community journalism. The State Media Company and SCETV are partners, as well.
Newsplex and the journalism faculty are moving into their fourth year of AMBER Alert training bringing media and law enforcement together through grants from the Department of Justice. Newsplex director Randy Covington, faculty member Hugh Munn and adjunct instructor Mike Quinn are heading this program.
Last fall, we hosted Dr. Augie Grant’s annual media convergence conference for the seventh year. For 2009. we’re making it a road show and heading west to co-host the conference with the University of Nevada-Reno in November.
This is my seventh year as dean of the college. Every day is an honor and a challenge. I’m repeatedly asked if I miss the life of a foreign or White House correspondent. Unfailingly, my answer is no, I’ve got a full-time job here. Had I nothing else to do, then I would miss the intensity of politics, the adrenaline of reporting, the urgency of deadlines. Now and then, I do wish academic deadlines were a little more urgent. The dramatic change in pace has always been the greatest adjustment from my days at CNN or ABC News. But there are reasons why news is urgent and education is careful and methodical. 
Our responsibility as educators — I consider myself both educator and journalist — is reinforced for me every day. Sometimes it is delivered by an excited student who’s gotten a first job or a door-opening internship. Sometimes it is a struggling student trying to find her place in the university. And often it is in the face of a four-year-old at education’s doorstep. Is that face puzzled, scared, already disadvantaged? Or is it one of those faces enlivened when our university mascot Cocky and his college friends visit an elementary school somewhere in the state to deliver the message that reading is the key to opening the door to knowledge?
I don’t want to overstay my welcome in the dean’s office, but there are a few things I hope to bring forward in the years ahead. Cocky’s
Reading Express™ has been a successful outreach program
for our School of Library and Information Science and USC’s student government. But it is only the most visible part of our Children, Libraries and Literacy Initiative. Our next goal is to escalate the effort, drill deeper, document the progress that students can make with a consistent literacy program. We want to address both foundational literacy and functional literacies — health, media, financial—with our collaborators within the college and across the university.
I’m also intent on being here when we pack out of the Coliseum and into a new home for the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. For a short while, at least, I want to put my feet up on the desk and look out a window towards the Horseshoe and feel confident that the university recognizes the place this college holds and the role it plays. Hold me accountable for achieving that.
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