The Department of Communication: Preparing Communicators for Tomorrow's Technology
This article describes changes to ECU's Department of Communication and its programs. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: Stutts, Marcia. "The Department of Communication: Preparing Communicators For Tomorrow's Technology," ECU Report, July 1992, Volume 23, No. 3.
It used to be that if you wanted to work in communications, you either trained for a writing career at a newspaper or magazine, or you studied broadcasting for a career in television or radio.But the technological explosion in the communications industry is creating a growing demand for professional communicators with more broad-based technological skills. East Carolina University has geared up to meet the demand.
"The rapidly converging technologies of desktop publishing, cable broadcasting, compact disk storage, fiber optics, online databases and, of course, the personal computer, are redefining the entire field of communication media," said Dr. T. Harrell Allen, professor and chair of ECU's Department of Communication.
A researcher and specialist in public relations, Allen was hired last fall to become the first full-time chair of the department. He came to ECU from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona where he was the communication department chairman.
"This glimpse of the future is here today, and it provides the broad outlines of the next century in which our students will launch careers," Allen said.
ECU has responded to this rapidly changing profession with some dramatic changes in its communications studies program. The transition began in 1990 when courses in journalism, speech and broadcasting, formerly taught in the English and theatre arts departments, were consolidated to form the Department of Communications -- the newest department in ECU's College of Arts and Sciences.
Broadcast majors now have a choice of four areas of concentration for a Bachelor of Science degree in communication: media production, media performance, electronic mass media management, and electronic news. Students opting for Bachelor of Arts degrees may focus on print journalism or public relations. Under the new curriculum approved last year, there are more problem-solving courses and less applied work.
"The previous focus was to compartmentalize people -- train them with the expectation that the graduate would work in newspaper, broadcasting or public relations," Allen said. "The new focus is much broader, as professionals in the coming 'Communications Century' are expected to have a much more comprehensive understanding of their craft," he said.
"More and more, when a communication major is hired by an agency -- public or private, he or she must have the technological knowledge and skills to produce messages," said Dr. Mary-Ann Leon, an assistant professor of communication.
"Those messages can be relayed in a number of ways, from developing a press release, to preparing a brochure, to producing a newsletter or videotape. The point is that they can't be just one thing. They've got to be prepared to be a number of things for an employer," she said.
"The future for communications graduates is indeed ever-widening," said James L. Rees, a professor of broadcasting and speech. "When I began teaching here in the mid-1960s, our broadcasting minor was primarily directed at preparing students to work in traditional radio and television stations," he said.
"Now our graduates are finding careers in other media-related fields like corporate communications, advertising and public relations. Some are working in fields that were in their infancy when I came to teach here, such as the cable industry. With the growth of new technologies using digital electronics, fiber optics and satellites, the future seems unlimited," Rees says.
As more students are attracted to the communication program, its graduates will fan out across the country to take their places in this ever-widening group of professionals. ECU communication graduates are already employed as close to home as Greenville, and as far away as Los Angeles, New York and Miami.
Carolyn Justice-Hinson '89 is the asistant for media relations with ECU's Sports Information Office. Her duties include editing the sports newsletter Purple Report, editing football programs and assisting with news releases and other public relations functions. A journalism major who completed her studies under the old system, Justice-Hinson said she is excited about the changes in the program.
Elizabeth Hicks '92 graduated in May, but got a jump start on her career when she left ECU earlier this spring for a job with NBC NewsChannel national headquarters in Charlotte. Hicks joined three other ECU graduates at the Charlotte operation: Pamela McGimpsey '86, William Petty '87 and John Cooper '89.
"I interned with the NBC affiliate in Charlotte last summer, and lived and breathed TV the whole summer," Hicks said.Now she handles transmissions going in and out of NBC's news hub, to and from affiliates across the nation and the world. Cooper is writing scripts, editing video and communicates with producers around the country.McGimpsey worked in radio for several years before coming to the NBC news operation. Today she produces a Healthside segment for the NBC overnight newscast Nightside. Petty has yet a different communcation responsibility at NBC; he coordinates programming for Nightside.
Communication majors are encouraged to serve in internships that give them hands-on experience with the technology, and introduce them to the skills they need to land and keep a job. This is an important aspect of the communication program and makes students more marketable, according to Dr. Ernest Phelps, associate professor of broadcasting.
"The students gain good career experience in such situations as going through the professional interview process," Phelps said.
The communication department helps to place students in internships with the local TV broadcast outlets in the area and with The Daily Reflector newspaper in Greenville. Interns, who must be rising seniors, also have been placed with advertising firms and radio stations.
Jill Cherry, a senior majoring in journalism, is getting a different view of the communication profession this summer during an internship with IBM in Research Triangle Park. She is involved in the research and writing of IBM's application for the Malcolm Baldridge Award, a national honor given by the U.S. Congress to an outstanding business.
Previously Cherry worked as an intern with Buckhead Press in Atlanta, where she received additional training in desktop publishing and design. "I'm impressed with the new programs in the communication department," she said."They mix academic with professional training. It gives you a better career focus and a lot of practical knowledge."
Students begin their communication studies with two gateway courses designed to provide a strong foundation on which to build a variety of careers -- Communication Theories and Processes in the first semester, followed by Media Writing in the second semester.
"Previously there was no overall writing course," Phelps said."The new media writing course deals with message construction, and helps students develop both writing and computer skills."
"The computer is the engine that is driving the communication train," said Allen."We have got to have students working on computers -- they must be computer literate."
In addition to a general curriculum overhaul, Allen has launched a campaign to provide students with a sampling of the high-tech equipment they will encounter in a competitive profession. Beginning this year, communication majors are working in a new media lab equipped with Macintosh computers.The lab is modeled after a facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
When the lab is complete, its computers will be linked to one another and to a central database complete with a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and many other information sources.The new equipment will be integrated into the revised curriculum to give students a broader background in communication.
"The idea is to train students not to write in a vacuum, but to realize that tremendous amounts of information are now available to them by merely typing a few keys," Allen said.
"As educators, more than ever, we have to keep pace with technological change and teach students new hands-on skills to work with it. Our approach at ECU is to build a technological environment that reflects the explosion of the communication industry and drop the students into it; let them learn by experiencing the technology first hand. We expect our media lab, if allowed to become a state-of-the-art facility, will allow our students to grasp the future," Allen said.
In an article published this year in North Carolina Press , Allen quotes Stewart Brand, who said: "Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road."
