User:Trudebeck/Northwestern University School of Communication

The School of Communication (originally the School of Oratory, from 1921 to 2003 the School of Speech) at Northwestern University is an undergraduate and graduate institution devoted to the study and application of performance and communication, located on Northwestern University's campus in Evanston, Illinois, about 12 miles north of downtown Chicago.

History
At the time of the school’s founding, 125 years ago, before the age of paved roads, television or radio, people often turned to public speakers for information and news. It was the age of the Chautauqua Circuit, a famous national touring group of public speakers and performers, who brought politics, prose and plays to cities across the country.

While public speaking was a popular pastime, elocution studies were struggling for credibility in the academic world. Some saw elocution as a frivolous populist pursuit, rather than a legitimate science worthy of serious academic study. But Robert McLean Cumnock, a regular on the Chautauqua Circuit and founder of the school, did not agree. He felt the study of elocution and public speaking had many practical applications in the real world. He taught the first elocution classes at Northwestern University, and as they gained in popularity, he designed a two-year elocution program in 1878, which would earn students a certificate from the University. It was then that the program was named the School of Oratory.

As class sizes grew, Cumnock hired the school’s first faculty. Those first professors were mostly women, and several, such as Agness Law, were graduates themselves of the school. Elocution was then considered an important part of a woman’s education. In 1894, Cumnock received permission from the University to raise funds to build a home for his new school. After a year of campaigning, Cumnock managed to raise enough money to build Annie May Swift Hall, which would become the school’s home for more than a century.

While Cumnock’s personal magnetism and single-minded determination were essential in the forming of the School of Oratory, they also limited the school’s scope. Cumnock resisted the broadening of the school during his tenure, choosing to focus narrowly on elocution, rather than expansion into related fields of study. From 1893 to his retirement in 1913, the catalog of course offerings hardly changed.

Ensuring the school’s continued survival would be a challenge that fell to Ralph Dennis, a former student of Cumnock’s, who took charge of the school after Cumnock stepped down from his post. Dennis earned a diploma in Oratory from the school in 1899, and a Bachelor of Letters degree from the College of Liberal Arts in 1901. Dennis would take the school to the next level, moving away from the reality of a school dependent on the charisma of one man, and move toward the idea of a modern school of communications with diverse offerings and a stellar faculty. The new dean envisioned a school that would become a respectable institution, adaptable to the changing needs of its students, and equal in status with the College of Liberal Arts.

Dennis hired faculty members with the credentials necessary to create a far more ambitious curriculum, including courses in public speaking, debate, storytelling, play presentation, literature, speech pathology, play writing and drama. He grew the faculty at the school from a handful of instructors to a staff of 21 respected experts in their fields, including Winifred Ward, who would be instrumental in the development of the Children’s Theatre, and Clarence Simon, who would be credited with developing the Speech Clinic at Northwestern to study speech disorders.

Dennis didn’t stop there. He engineered the leap from a certificate program to a four-year liberal arts, bachelor of letters degree, which would be followed in subsequent years by a master’s degree program and a Bachelor of Science in Speech.

During the 1920s, University Theatre developed, growing out of several existing theatrical organizations on campus. The first Waa-Mu show hit the stage in 1929. Although not an official part of the theatre program, Northwestern's annual Waa-Mu productions have been strongly associated with the department since the uniting of theatrical efforts of the Women's Athletic Association (WAA) with the Men's Union (MU).

By 1920, the school’s name no longer reflected the broad range of courses now being offered at the institution. The following year, the trustees voted to change the name from the School of Oratory to the School of Speech. This marked a new phase in the life of the school, which would face new challenges and herald new accomplishments in its new incarnation as the School of Speech.

Dennis remained dean until 1942, and during his long tenure the school evolved further, assuming much of the structure that remains today. Dennis cultivated the seeds of the school’s modern departments – performance studies, theatre, radio/television/film, communication studies and communication science and disorders – laying the foundation upon which the school would be built.

In 1942, James McBurney moved into the dean’s office with the intent to improve the school’s academic reputation both inside and outside the university.

McBurney himself had impressive academic credentials, including law studies and a Ph.D. in speech from the University of Michigan. During his post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University from 1935 to 1936, he was instrumental in shaping and developing their graduate program.

As dean, McBurney organized the loose specializations of study at the School of Speech into five official departments: Interpretation, Public Speaking, Theatre, Speech Re-education and Radio. During McBurney’s 30-year tenure as dean, these departments grew into dynamic and modern fields of study.

Under his leadership, the school experienced a number of firsts. Interpretation faculty member Robert Breen developed Chamber Theater. The then-Public Speaking Department, which became Communication Studies in 1972, began a new approach to public speaking, including a broader foundation in liberal arts and the theory behind communication. In the science of communication, the first audiology courses were offered, and the Radio Department branched out into the study of television and film, becoming the first department to study film in an academic environment.

After McBurney retired in 1972, Dean Roy Wood took the helm. Wood built upon McBurney’s work, strengthening many of the school’s relationships, including ones to alumni and the community.

Wood’s contributions to the school continued to strengthen and build upon the changes McBurney made. Under Wood, twenty new faculty positions were added, and he began limiting the hiring of Northwestern graduates in order to broaden the credentials of faculty members and continue to build upon the national reputation McBurney fought so hard to achieve.

Communication is a facility-intensive study and Wood helped the school add much-needed new buildings and classroomsThe Frances Searle Building, built in 1972, became home to Communicative Disorders, unifying the major areas of the department: clinics, research and teaching. During Wood’s tenure, the Theatre and Interpretation Center also was built.

Wood's successor, David Zarefsky, was very much a product of Northwestern. A star debater as an undergraduate at the School, Zarefsky joined the Northwestern faculty in 1968 and completed his graduate degrees while he rose through the faculty ranks. He headed Northwestern's nationally recognized forensics program from 1970 to 1975, chaired communication studies, and served as associate dean before becoming dean in 1988, a post he held until 2000.

During his years as a student, faculty member, and dean, Zarefsky has noted many changes at Northwestern, most notably the diversification of the University's student body. Under his deanship, student enrollment increased from 1,000 to 2,000. While dean, programs in theatre, communication studies, radio/television/film and communication sciences and disorders achieved national rankings, including the 1998 U.S. News and World Report's rating of the audiology and speech pathology programs among the top two in the country.

Zarefsky reached out to alumni during his deanship, establishing the Northwestern University Entertainment Alliance (NUEA) with chapters in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. Comprised of working professionals in the arts and entertainment industry, NUEA has proven an excellent networking source to alumni in this highly competitive field. While Zarefsky was dean, four endowed chairs were established at the school, and John J. Louis Hall, a state of the art media production facility was built.

Barbara O'Keefe became the school's sixth dean in 2000. Dean O’Keefe has overseen the reorganization of the School’s facilities, the overhaul of the school’s web site, and a myriad of new programs, including Scripts and Scores, a program that encourages the production of original works at the School.

“Both our subjects and our scholarship have changed dramatically,” Dean O’Keefe said, referring to the school’s illustrious history.

Faculty in communication sciences and disorders, she said, work with neuroscientists across the Northwestern campus to make new discoveries about the brain, which will lead us to a better understanding of the mechanisms of speech, hearing, writing and reading. Communication studies and Radio/Television/Film have also seen great change.

“While some faculty in communication studies still analyze public speeches and group discussions, others study communication in personal relationships, mass communication processes and effects, telecommunications policy and institutions, and cross-cultural communication,” Dean O’Keefe said. “We teach almost no courses in radio, but faculty in radio/television/film study use the whole range of cinematic and electronic media including new Internet technologies.”

Today, Performance studies still relies on the methods of textual analysis and presentation first developed in the original oral interpretation department of decades ago, but current faculty in the department are far more likely to create original work that finds life beyond the campus from Chicago stages to Broadway. Theatre department faculty use classic training while incorporating new technologies into stage productions and study.

From its modest beginnings, the School of Communication has grown to include a faculty that numbers close to 100, with 1,150 undergraduates and graduate students. Begun with one elocution class, the school has grown to become one of the most respected Communication schools in the country. In the 125 years of the School of Communication's history, generations of faculty and students have strived for excellence, transforming Cumnock's vision into an institution that touches the world.

School Buildings

 * Annie May Swift Hall. Currently undergoing renovation, the building once housed WNUR's McCoy Studios, the offices of the departments of Radio/Television/Film and Performance Studies, and a few classrooms.
 * The Theatre and Interpretation Center (TIC). Houses classrooms and performance spaces.
 * Frances Searle Building. Houses classrooms and the offices of the Communication Studies and Communication Sciences and Disorders programs.
 * John J. Louis Hall. Houses production facilities for the department of Radio/Television/Film, as well as WNUR Studios.
 * Block Museum and Cinema.

Performance Venues

 * Mussetter-Struble Theatre. In TIC.
 * Wallis Theatre. In TIC.
 * Cahn Auditorium. Shared with the School of Music, this is the only performance venue on campus with a full orchestra pit.