New students treated to a lively and informative opening convocation

Approximately 225 new students, parents and other family members attended the 2006 New Students Convocation, Sunday, Aug. 20.

Dr. Shirley Staples Carter, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, welcomed the students to campus on behalf of all faculty and staff.

The freshmen were treated to lively presentations by five students who recounted their own freshman-year experiences. Kristin Bevacqua (public relations), Kate Macary (advertising), George Stevens (visual communications), Taylor Smith (print journalism) and May graduate Caroline Love (broadcast journalism) advised the new J-School students to keep asking questions, get involved, develop relationships with their professors and have fun during the next four years.

Professors Ran Wei (advertising/public relations), Van Kornegay (visual communications) and Ernest Wiggins (print/electronic) discussed some of the opportunities, events and challenges the students can look forward to experiencing during their upcoming college careers.

"I'd like to welcome you to the School of Journalism and Mass Communications by telling you about someone you'll never meet during your time with us but whose contributions to the School and the University have made it possible for you to be here today.

James Rion McKissick's service as dean of the School of Journalism in the 1920s and 1930s, and later as president of the University through the early 1940s, resonates everywhere on campus.   

If you read the record of his years at the University -- a summary of it written by our colleague Professor Patricia McNeely can be found on the school's Web site -- you will see evidence of Dr. McKissick's vision, his desire for personal and institutional growth, his pursuit of academic innovation, his love of students and learning and his ardent commitment to the collection, preservation and dissemination of knowledge.

James Rion McKissick was a native of Union, South Carolina, who graduated from South Carolina College with the Class of 1905. He attended Harvard Law School and was admitted to the South Carolina Bar but chose to pursue a nobler profession (at least in my view): He became a newspaper man. He wrote for an assortment of papers, was an editorialist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and later was the editor of the Greenville News and then the Greenville Piedmont. In 1927, he left daily newspapers to become the Journalism School's second dean.

Dean McKissick loved students and teaching -- and the University. Former students described him as a kind and patient instructor who drilled students in the fundamentals of journalistic practices. He and his wife, Caroline, acted as surrogate parents to the handful of students enrolled in the newly instituted Journalism School. They welcomed them into their home, which was near the campus. After he was appointed the University's chief administrator in 1936, President McKissick continued as dean of the school for three years.

It is fitting that the School of Journalism and Mass Communications' sister in the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies is the School of Library and Information Science for during his administration, President McKissick devoted himself to expanding the University's library holdings and oversaw the construction of a new undergraduate library at the top of the Horseshoe. That site had previously been the president's residence and later the home of the Journalism School. Begun the year after he took office, the library was completed in 1940. When President McKissick died in 1944, it was renamed the McKissick Memorial Library. When holdings outgrew that facility, the undergraduate library moved in 1976 to its present location on Greene Street. The library President McKissick built became the McKissick Museum, which now houses, among other material collections, the South Carolina Broadcaster's Association Archives.

Dr. McKissick has been dead for more than 60 years now but his spirit is all over the University. This former newspaper man is the only USC president entombed on campus, just outside the first USC library -- South Caroliniana -- on the Horseshoe. He is memorialized there for keeping the faith. Faith in what? Perhaps, Faith in the institution. Faith in learning. Faith in the rejuvenating and restorative power of knowledge. Or perhaps, simply, Faith in human beings. All would be appropriate, I think.

Reports that Dr. McKissick's ghost has been seen reading newspapers in the South Caroliniana Library are not to be trusted, however.

 About 30 years ago, at the end of my freshman year, I received the J. Rion McKissick Scholarship in Journalism. Being a callow youth at the time, I knew little about the man whose name was attached to the award I'd received. And little did I know that 17 years after receiving that scholarship I would be joining the faculty of the School that Dean McKissick -- and the scores of other administrators, faculty, staff and students over the years -- had worked so tirelessly to build and whose honor and reputation WE so jealously guard.

I welcome you to the University and into our family and I look forward to working with as many of you as I can in the coming years. I would urge you to work hard and dedicate yourselves -- like Dean McKissick -- to the pursuit of knowledge and personal growth and -- in whatever ways you are able -- leave the J-School and the University better for your having been here."