A Message from the Director Spring 2009 - By Dr. Patrick Murphy - Photo By Sean Roberts
Welcome to the inaugural web version of the Mass Communicator!
As I prepared this column it was hard not to wax nostalgic, as this will be my last year as Department Chair. Yes, almost six years have gone by since I took the chair position. Where did the time go?
The experience has been wonderful, made especially satisfying by the fact that I have worked with a highly talented and creative group of media practitioners and scholars committed to delivering a quality program. Indeed, it is my feeling that, from the hiring of exciting new faculty and the refining of the curriculum to be more responsive to a transforming job market to our 2005 accreditation by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, as a unit we have accomplished much in the past six years. I am honored to have had the opportunity to lead the department.
As I prepare to step down at the end of June, I know that the unit will continue to be responsive to the challenges of our dynamic field. I am leaving it in the capable hands of my respected colleague, Dr. Gary Hicks. If you get a chance, drop Gary a note of support. I am sure he’d love to hear from you.
As most of you know, our program has been fortunate to enjoy incredible facilities in the form of a spacious and well-equipped television studio, a fantastic video editing lab, excellent computer labs and great classrooms. But as I have said before, our strongest resource has been and continues to be the people that constitute “the department.” I like to think of this unit as comprised of not just our faculty and staff, but of our students and alumni as well.
The activities and accomplishments of these groups of individuals come together to form a confluence of energy and ideas, which, in turn, gives form and purpose to our educational mission. Our ability to exercise this mission is measured in the present and mapped in terms of the future, but is also tied to the past. In fact, tales of the likes of Ryder, Shaheen, Ward, Winter and the Regnells — those professors who originally conjured up this unit’s academic cosmology — were sung to those of us who came in the 1990s by resident oral historians Nora Baker (now retired) and Frank Akers.
Now a new generation of educators like Ibroscheva, Kapatamoyo, Yu, Byers and Hale—names no doubt unknown to those who graduated in the past millennium—are adding their own signatures to this legacy in ways that draw from the past but that also chart exciting new directions for the program.
But as much as anything, the department’s legacy is tethered to the activities of our students. We are certainly proud of the accomplishments of alumni like Bob Kochan, Camille Emig-Hill, Alonzo Bryd, Bill Plaschke, Steve Jankowski, Peter Maer and Lendell Phelps. However, we are equally excited about the futures of current students, like Megan McClure, Preston Gibson, Holly Meyer, Alex Trepka and Catherine Klene. How these student standouts and those who follow them put their own mark on the media industry during such a dynamic, technologically driven time is something we’ll be watching closely.
In recognizing this running thread between the past and the present, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the departure of a key person who will be, in my opinion, irreplaceable. I am speaking of Chief Engineer John Kautzer, who is slated to retire next fall after 29 years of service. Since I came to SIUE in 1994, it has been my sincere privilege to work with him. My appreciation for John is not only measured in terms of his superior capacity to keep a TV studio and other production facilities running smoothly in a teaching environment were equipment is prone to “malfunction.” I am also inspired by his unquenchable intellectual curiosity. Imagine, if you will, working with an engineer who can switch from troubleshooting the intricacies of digital convergence to engaging in a conversation about the political currency of Chalmers Johnson’s latest book or the mythic iconography of Gilgamesh! He has been a pleasure to work with and will be greatly missed.
Finally, I should note that this new virtual rendition of the Mass Communicator will keep with tradition in that it is full of stories and updates about the program, as well as notes about our graduates. However, we’ve designed this site to go beyond the limits of past hard copies of the newsletter by taking advantage of the some of the more interactive qualities of the Internet. That means through this site you’ll be able to find and interact with long lost classmates, post messages about job opportunities or industry-related news or just share information about what you’re up to. I hope that you’ll take advantage of this forum (called “Mass Comm Alumni Friends Group”) and use it as a resource to reconnect with past friends and possibly even meet new ones.
I also hope you’ll use it to keep in touch with us.