The department of communication arts, which once encompassed broadcast communication, speech communication, sports communication and journalism, has now been divided into two departments: communication studies, and journalism and digital media.

“The department of communication arts was a large umbrella… It was [five] things that were related but also really different,” said Gretchen Dworznik, assistant professor of broadcast communication. “It was a very large department that had…interrelated interests, but at the same time totally different directions that [they] needed to go in.”

Dawn Weber, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the new departments are more focused than the old department.

“The department of communication arts was such a broad…department that it was difficult, I think, for prospective students to find the special program areas that they were interested in,” she said. “What we did was take one department and create two more highly focused academic…departments.”

Speech and sports communication are now under the department of communication studies while journalism and broadcast communication are under the department of journalism and digital media.

Deleasa Randall-Griffiths, associate professor of speech communication, refused to comment regarding the changes.

“Basically, [we] just split it up and made both departments a little smaller and kept those things together that have common interests,” Dworznik said. “It makes it easier to do what you need to do to improve your department and grow in the future… You are a little more nimble if you are a smaller department.”

Over the summer, all students with majors and minors that fell under the old communication arts department received letters informing them of the transition to the two new departments. Faculty and staff worked very hard to ensure that students were not blindsided or nervous about the changes, and that the transitions went smoothly.

“Last spring the dean decided that the focus needed to be narrowed,” said Tim McCarty, professional instructor and TV2 advisor. “We worked really hard this summer…in JDM [journalism and digital media] to get our new curriculum ready for presentation to our college and to our institution, and we are about to embark on that…journey.”

“We haven’t really had any problems,” Dworznik added. “…Over the summer [we took care] of all the administrative issues that come with creating a new department and …we met repeatedly over the summer to iron all [the problems] out, so that when we started this semester we were a new department and… we [had] tied up all the loose ends.”

Students do not need to worry because, as of right now, the curriculum for each of the majors hasn’t changed; only administrative changes have been made, Dworznik said.

Administrative changes include Dawn Weber, dean of The College of Arts and Sciences, taking on the position of interim chair of the department of communication studies.

“We made [the] decision to do that as we look at the speech communication curriculum and move forward,” Weber said.

Tim McCarty is now the interim chair for the department of journalism and digital media.

No faculty members’ positions changed, Weber said. However, some staff positions were changed and consolidated.

“As a part of the reorganization, we moved from two staff positions within the department of journalism and digital media to one,” Weber said. “That was based on the needs of the new department and the additional staff line will be converted into a faculty position in multimedia.”

Students should not be worried about tensions between faculty and departments, Weber said.

“It’s a completely needless concern,” Weber said. “Our faculty are professionals and our journalism and digital media faculty [are] extremely excited about the development of their department. Our communication studies department faculty…are highly engaged in moving forward and…creating new traditions.”

“We’ve taken the ball and started running with it,” Dworznik said.

“Our dean did all of the hard work,” McCarty said, “and basically gave the two departments homework assignments over the summer. We are re-charting a new course for AU media education. To be able to create a brand new curriculum that is more authentic, more relevant and more in-tune with the media world is really exciting.”

McCarty said that the process of developing a new curriculum was challenging but helped stretch the department to better itself.

“It’s a good challenge,” McCarty said. “We each picked a couple of different institutions and studied how they present and teach the medias we are dealing with. We [took] some of the best ideas for course work out of all of that. Our goal was to take that concept of a converged media department and bring it down to a small college level. I think we did a great job achieving that.”

Along with the administrative change, new equipment has been given to both new departments.

The journalism and digital media department has received five new TV monitors, Blu-ray DVD players, DVD/VHS combo players, network file storage drives and two new pro-editing systems, Dworznik said.

“We were really grateful because it has enabled us to …spiff up what we’re doing and bring some new things to our department that we didn’t have before,” Dworznik said.

“Media is technology heavy [and] dependent,” McCarty said. “In addition to the academic components evolving in JDM, the operations side [is] also working hard to evolve.”

The communication studies department has received a camera that can be used for performance classes, Weber said.

With administrative changes completed, new equipment in place and a new curriculum on its way, the prospects for the future of these departments are bright and in motion.

“We are working right now on a complete curriculum redesign, which if we can get it passed, will really put this program on the cutting edge of media programs around the state,” Dworznik said. “No other small colleges are doing what we are aiming to do. We want to see the program explode…We would love to double our size in five years and get as many majors as we can in here…We can offer kids some things that they can’t get anywhere else.”

McCarty agreed.

“Here’s the bottom line…there are 51 colleges in the state of Ohio recruiting high school students – the best of the best – and for us to be in that conversation, we needed to evolve [our] media programs,” McCarty said. “So we think that the great things that AU now has to offer are really going to please.”

“We just want to grow,” Dworznik said, “We want [the program] to get so big that they don’t know what to do with us.”