Big changes in industry force big changes in teaching and learning.

MOUNT BERRY, Ga. – This month the department of Communication marked 25 years as a stand-alone department at Berry, using its annual awards night to celebrate the milestone.

Charles “Ned” Peterson, Dean of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, Founder of Berry College Communication Department.

The department split from the English and speech-theatre department in 1989.

It was a former dean of liberal arts and professional studies, Charles “Ned” Peterson, who introduced the idea of a stand-alone communication department in the late 1980s, according to Bob Frank, who joined Berry in 1979 and is the only chair the department has ever had.

“He [Peterson] pretty much single-handedly pushed it through,” Frank said.

The department named its highest award, the Ned Peterson Award, which commends the department’s top all-around student, after the founding dean. At this year’s awards night, which used the theme, “Keep Calm, I’m Only a Quarter of a Century Old,” went to Communication senior Josahandy Roman.

Ch-ch-change

Since 1989, the only constant for the department has been change. From offering only speech and journalism 25 years ago, the department now offers concentrations in public relations, visual communication, journalism and, as of this academic year, sports communication.

Bob Frank, then and now.

“The department is forward-thinking and has continued to adapt throughout its livelihood so as to mirror industry,” said Frank, who announced he will be retiring from full-time teaching after the academic year 2014-15.

Tom Kennedy, dean of the Evans School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, said it is the department’s willingness to adapt and to respond to even big, transformative changes in industry that most impress him.

“[I] love to brag on the department because of its ability to be insightful to contemporary communication and [to] be creative in its response” to convergence in industry and in its own curriculum, he said.

Kennedy pointed out that with 119 students this academic year, Communication ranks as the fourth largest major at Berry and “the only major within the Evans School that has noticed growth over the last four years.”

After the establishment of the stand-alone Communication department, student interest took the department from one major to 50 in only two years, Kennedy said.

Media convergence

Curt Hersey in 1991, left, and more recently.

The addition of sports communication is only the latest of a series of rolling changes that saw the department move from a medium-by-medium approach to communication education to one that cross-trains all majors across all media and media platforms.

The newer approach is called convergence, and it has brought with it wholesale changes in the ways the department’s courses are taught, in how faculty collaborate, in the kinds of study abroad opportunities that are offered, and even in campus media. Beginning reporting students, for example, learn to report for print, digital and video in the same class.

The big switch to a converged curriculum was made in 2007, when VikingFusion replaced the campus TV station, Viking Vision.

Frank said he missed the simplicity of the old Berry television station.

“It was so regular,” he said. “It was so uncomplicated.”

But 2007 wasn’t the first time the department overhauled its approach to how it teaches its majors.

“We started out with a broadcasting concentration,” said Kathy Richardson, Berry provost and a professor of public relations. “As television shifted to include cable and then video, we shifted the courses some and called it ‘Electronic Media’. . . . That then converged into visual communication.”

Richardson joined Berry in 1986 and founded the department’s public relations concentration, the largest of the four offered.

More recently, industry standards have led the department to emphasize the value of becoming familiar with the common practices in radio, television, film, public relations, journalism and digital, Frank said.

Change = excitement

Teaching and learning in fields that are so subject to technological innovation and changes in America’s media diets is daunting but thrilling, said Brian Carroll, associate professor of Communication.

“We’re at an incredibly exciting time for anyone in any of the communication fields because so much is up in the air right now,” he said. “Despite all of that change, however, we know we need to prepare students for careers, not for what’s hot or faddish the day after they graduate. So we continue to emphasize core skill sets.”

Carroll said the Communication faculty is excited about sports communication because of the vibrant sports scene at Berry and in the greater Rome community.

“Adding sports was a no-brainer,” he said. “We have demonstrated interest among students, we have expertise on our faculty, and there is no more exciting area of communication right now than sports media.”