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Show Faculty votes to merge Journalism and Speech By DAN STEGGELL Chronicle Staff By overwhelming votes in both the Department of Journalism and the Department of Speech, faculty members have agreed to a merger of the two divisions into a Department of Communication. Com-munication. The merger proposal was submitted to Dr. Alfred A. Cave, dean of the College of Humanities, Dec. 31 of last year. In a meeting of the Journalism student advisory committee Wednesday, student members voted four to two in approval of the merger. Proposal of the new department resulted from a dispute over the teaching of Speech's telecommunications and Journalism's Jour-nalism's broadcast series. Although both programs were essentially teaching the same courses, degrees were being given in both departments. Under the proposal submitted by an ad hoc committee appointed by Dean Cave, the new Communication Department will consist of three divisions: 1) journalism and mass communications, 2) speech communication, and 3) speech pathology and audiology. The telecommunications and broadcast series will now be taught solely under the journalism and mass communications division. "The committee sees the following proposal as a format which shows some promise of minimizing frictions, facilitating cooperation, and strengthening mutual aspirations of the departments, without jeopardizing any existing programs," pro-grams," the submitted proposal reads. The eventual hope is that there will be a College of Communication, according to Tom Horton, chairman of the Journalism student advisory committee. However, Bill Marling, student member of the committee, said that he doesn't "think there will ever be a College of Communication Com-munication because they'll never be able to get enough majors." "Nonsense," Horton said. "With a strengthened broadcasting sequence and its eventual accreditation and hopefully the accreditation of the advertising and public relations sequences, more majors will be attracted and the program will grow." Marling feels that the merger hurts the Journalism program by taking away its departmental status. A College of Communication Com-munication would retain journalism as a department. In a minority report, Neff Smart, associate professor of journalism, said that the proposed merger would put the program's autonomy with respect to budget, curriculum, and faculty acquisitions in jeopardy.' "These are serious risks, and accepting sub-departmental sub-departmental status with such risks tends to debase journalism as a profession and as a University discipline," Prof. Smart said. In 1969, a committee was appointed by the academic vice-president to study the department and establish its role in the University. In its report, the committee declared: "The essential conclusion of our report is that the work of this department deserves to be given a higher priority in the affiars of the University." The 1969 committee saw "no advantage to a merger of Journalism with Speech." |