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Dean speaks....writes Why a building? “Why a building?” one faculty member asked me recently. “Why not just put a few million dollars into upgrading the Coliseum?” It’s a fair question. One answer is that we don’t have a few million to fix up the Coliseum. And if we did, is this where we should spend it? If you were in the journalism school anytime from about 1970 on, you experienced life in the Coliseum. Let’s be honest, it was built for Frank McGuire’s basketball team. Classrooms, as I understand it, were only a means for getting federal funding for the basketball arena upstairs. Since the Carolina Center – recently renamed the Colonial Center – opened last year, we don’t even have the Gamecock basketball teams as housemates. We’re rooming with the Inferno, a minor league hockey team. The later you were here, the less appealing the Coliseum probably was. We’ve shoehorned ever more students into an inelastic space. Enrollment this semester is 1,519 students. It was 905 in spring 1999. When we created the print and broadcast senior semester programs, we found a nook for the Carolina Reporter and a cranny for the Carolina News. You don’t really want to know about the maze of wiring and duct tape that keeps these things alive. Our largest classroom holds 82 students. Our largest class has 221. It’s held in the College of Nursing. We hold our Freshman Convocation in the law school auditorium. We teach distance education courses from the Swearingen engineering building. Yet, the Coliseum, at Blossom and Assembly streets, is a prime piece of real estate. It could be a significant piece of USC’s future development, including the planned research campus. In other words, the Coliseum having outlived its role as an arena is a candidate for implosion. In the long run, staying here might not even be an option. But there’s another reason to create a new home for the journalism school. It’s our image. Recently, an alumnus told us of a prospective journalism student who paid a visit to USC. She’d also been considering North Carolina and Georgia. After seeing the Coliseum, she concluded USC wasn’t up to snuff. Fair? No. Our faculty are dedicated and experienced, though stretched by the number of students and our constrained budget. Our broadcast senior semester accomplishes more than Georgia’s. Our ad and PR programs have national stature. Newsplex is our sleek, high tech laboratory for media convergence, albeit a mile from campus. USC graduates are welcomed in newsrooms, ad shops and public relations agencies. Bricks and mortar don’t make success stories. They do make an impression. So why a building? LeConte’s roughly 70,000 square feet will comfortably house the School of Journalism and Mass Communications as well as the administrative offices of the college. The School of Library and Information Science will remain in Davis College, but also benefit from the features designed for LeConte. We envision facilities for distance education and continuing education and a 250-seat auditorium in the redesigned building. The state-of-the-art facilities will bring our logistics up to the level of our thinking about convergent media. We’re committed to bring the next iteration of Newsplex on campus. We want to expand our distance education capability in order to reach a broader range of students. There’s also a mindset and morale factor. Faculty members who’ve been at USC awhile remind me that previous deans have said, “When we move to a new building.” Unfortunately, there are grounds for skepticism. I’ve dug through old files and found plans from the 1980s for a new journalism school where the National Advocacy Center now stands and from the 1990s for converting Petigru College. We spent part of the past year determining Petigru’s small and convoluted layout was not nearly the solution LeConte can be. LeConte is a 50-something building, now not particularly distinguished, that houses math and statistics classrooms and offices. It will need major renovation and a distinctive new portal to create auditorium space and, frankly, a bit of style. LeConte is in the heart of the campus, on Gibbes Green just behind McKissick Museum and the historic Horseshoe. I used to work at a television station in Philadelphia that was in sight of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Arriving at work held a moment of inspiration. The other stations were on the edge of a suburban shopping mall. Location. Location. Location. What’s it going to cost? To do it right and equip it to our students’ maximum benefit, we estimate about $25 million. Some $3 million has been appropriated for the design phase. That allows us to keep moving forward while we raise the rest. How can you help? We hoped you’d ask. We’ll need contributions, of course: three-, five- and seven-figure ones. But there’s more to it than that. The corporations that hire our graduates have a stake in our success. We hope they’ll participate. Where you work, you can be an advocate. Alumni who’ve scattered around the globe are part of our success story. Remind your classmates where they got their start. Consider what you might do. |
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In
the last Intercom, we told you the university trustees had approved
a proposal to relocate the College of Mass Communications and Information
Studies to LeConte College. It’s an ambitious and expensive
undertaking meant to raise the college to a new level.
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It will take all levels of participation to bring the LeConte project to a successful conclusion. As the design progresses, we’ll know more precisely what our technology needs will be. There will be naming opportunities at various levels — studios, campaign rooms, classrooms, labs, the jschool itself. And, of course, we want to know what’s worked well in the past and what we might improve for future students.
Why a building? The building is not an end, but a means to an end. There are no windows where we sit in the bowels of the Coliseum. We can’t tell when it’s raining or the sun’s gone down.
We’d love the physical lift of being able to look out the window onto Gibbes Green. But we’d really love the metaphoric lift of a window on the world beyond the campus and knowing we have provided the best facilities for the students we send into that world.
Drop by when you’re in the neighborhood. We’ll show you what we have in mind.
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Charles Bierbauer's Dr. and Mrs. William D. Anderson, Jr. |
Thanks to Dean's Circle
Before New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman spoke to 2,200 people in the Koger Center, he attended a private dinner that included several members of Charles Bierbauer's Dean's Circle.
"The dinner invitation was a small thank you to some people we greatly appreciate,” said Bierbauer.
The Dean's Circle is made up of individuals who this year have contributed $1,000 or more to the College. The Circle currently has 11 members.
The money raised through the Dean's Circle is unrestricted, which means the dean can use it where it is needed most for student scholarships, faculty research and worthwhile activities such as the nationally ranked ad and PR teams.
Members of the Dean’s Circle are recognized in Intercom, on a plaque outside the dean’s office and at private functions like the Friedman dinner. Plans are in the works for a special event for Dean’s Circle members that will be part of the College’s Mass Communications Week next spring.
“As state funding dwindles and tuitions rise, private support like this is critical,” said Randy Covington, the College's advancement director.