Part 2: Restructuring

Jan. 10, 2024

This is the second in a series of three stories on the deletion of Arkansas State University’s degree program in journalism and broadcasting.

By Roy Ockert Jr.

While the action last spring of a state board to delete the bachelor’s degree program in multi-media journalism at Arkansas State University apparently came as a surprise to many people, the program had been in decline for at least a decade.

Indeed, the 2021 Viability Report issued by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education listed multimedia journalism, as well as master’s programs in journalism and radio-television, as nonviable. A notation on the chart indicated that multi-media journalism would be reported at the January 2022 meeting of the state Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Minutes for that board meeting say the report, which found 565 programs to be non-viable since 2020, was presented and discussed. A board member asked if there were penalties for institutions that didn’t meet the viability standards, and an ADHE official explained that when a program is considered below the viability threshold, it is given two additional years to meet viability, “or the program could be removed from the board approved program inventory.”

In 2023 an ADHE officer told an A-State administrator she could find no record that the university had responded to that report. The lack of response to a potentially damaging report about a once highly successful 88-year-old academic program would set the stage for its demise. The report should have raised a red flag.

A bachelor of science degree in journalism was added to the Arkansas State College catalog in the fall of 1934, and a radio journalism and broadcasting curriculum was started in 1953. Four years later the Department of Radio, Journalism and Printing was established.

The College of Communications was founded in 1973, and a fall 1974 alumni publication reported the college had 296 students majoring in the three degree programs. That included 150 in broadcasting, 116 in journalism and 30 in printing. That was also the year L.W. “Tex” Plunkett, founder of the department, retired.

Soon sequences were added allowing journalism majors to specialize in public relations, advertising or community journalism, and later in photojournalism. A master’s degree in journalism and radio-TV was started in 1979.

By the fall of 1989 the number of majors had grown to 598, with 307 of those in radio-TV and 243 in journalism. However, much of the journalism growth was in the numbers of students pursuing PR and advertising specializations.

In 1999 ASU reported that 2,237 students had graduated with degrees in communications, of which 943 were in radio-TV and 918 were in journalism. By that time the number of majors in the college had started declining slowly as technology, especially the World Wide Web, began affecting all fields of communications.

The first of many administrative reorganization attempts came in 1998 with a proposal to merge the College of Communications with the larger College of Fine Arts. That effort failed amid strong opposition from communications alumni, but the Department of Speech was moved into Communications.

Two strong and longtime leaders of ASU journalism education — Dr. Joel Gambill, head of the journalism and printing department, and Dr. Russ Shain, dean of the college — both retired in 2010. About the same time Dr. Les Wyatt stepped down as university president. That opened the door to several administrative changes. Eventually, Dr. Brad Rawlins was hired from Brigham Young University to be the dean of the college.

In his second year as dean, 2013, Rawlins proposed a dramatic reorganization. Alumni learned about it only three days before it was to be presented to the ASU Board of Trustees. After fielding a litany of questions and objections, Rawlins said he would use the “get out of jail free” card that new deans are given and asked the provost to table the restructuring resolution.

A special joint meeting of the Journalism-Public Relations and Broadcasting advisory boards, comprised of professionals, most of whom were alumni, was called to explain the proposal and gather input.

Among other things the proposal created a College of Media and Communication and reorganized it into a Department of Media and a Department of Communication, thus dropping the journalism identification. Broadcast and print journalism curricula were merged into a new degree program called multimedia journalism (dropping the broadcasting label) — ostensibly to address technology advances in communications.

The Department of Media would also include a degree program in media production, combining production areas of audio, video, digital, graphic communication and the Web. The Department of Communication would include a new major called strategic communication, separating advertising and public relations from journalism, and communications studies, essentially the old speech program.

One of the expressed purposes for reorganization was that the number of undergraduate majors in the college had declined from 377 in 2003 to 271 in 2012. Journalism had shrunk from 216 majors to 129, and radio-TV from 173 to 119. Only 24 journalism students were specializing in news-editorial or photojournalism, 47 in PR or advertising. Broadcast journalism majors numbered 46.

Faculty and alumni were heavily opposed, but then-Chancellor Tim Hudson and then-Provost Lynita Cooksey favored the plan, and a month later it was presented without significant changes to the ASU Board of Trustees and passed with no discussion.

Only two years later (2015) the administration was back with another restructuring proposal. Presented by Hudson and Cooksey as a cost-saving plan, the plan combined three colleges — Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Media and Communication.

There was little enthusiasm for the plan, but faculty and administrators accepted it somewhat reluctantly. One faculty member said at the time that the college had “suffered greatly from the restructuring that we have already done and our identity has been lost.” Rawlins became interim dean of the much larger reformed college, but within a year he had taken a new position at Campus Queretaro in Mexico.

Hudson left the ASU campus in disgrace in 2016,  before the 3-in-1 college had even been officially named the College of Liberal Arts and Communication. He was replaced in May 2017 by Dr. Kelly Damphousse, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, which housed the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, one of the best in the nation.

After becoming dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Communications, Dr. Carl Cates pushed to resurrect the journalism program and found a willing ally in Damphousse. Saying the university was responding to the wishes of alumni and needs of future students, Damphousse presented a Cates resolution to the ASU Board of Trustees in December 2018, calling for the creation of a School of Media and Journalism within the college. It was approved unanimously.

“The dissolution of this college has resulted in challenges with program identity and program growth. …” Cates told a reporter. “The old college needs to be re-attached so as to function the best we can. It makes sense for this to help restore the program’s visibility. Interested students can find the program.”

However, a significant piece of the former College of Communications was left out of the new school structure. The strategic communications program, comprised of advertising, public relations and social media management, remained in the college’s Department of Communication, reportedly at the request of its faculty. Advertising and PR had originally been part of the journalism degree program, and there were still many connections.

A job posting for the director of the new professional school included no mention of professional experience as a qualification but rather just academic experience, starting with a terminal degree in media, journalism or a related field.

Rawlins, back from the Mexican campus, was named interim director in May 2019, and a year later he was made permanent director.

In less than six years the journalism and broadcast programs had been part of three administrative reorganizations. Unfortunately, none of them worked to reverse the loss of students.

Next: Where does A-State go from here with its journalism program?