Deans of Change: Keeping Their Schools Current with the Digital Revolution, Raising Enough Money to Make That Happen and Putting Together Diverse Staffs Are among the Challenges Facing the People Who Run the Nation's Journalism and Mass Communication Schools

Sheehan, Matthew C., Mihailidis, Paul, American Journalism Review

Atop the high hill from which Syracuse University keeps watch on its hard-working hometown, the building known as Newhouse III has been going up for the past two years. A soaring construct full of glass and high technology, this 74,000-square-foot addition to the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications is replete with spaces for research and learning on a formal and informal basis. Designed by the New York architectural firm of Polshek Partnership, it joins Newhouse I (created by I.M. Pei and completed in 1964) and Newhouse II (finished in 1974) to finalize benefactor S.I. Newhouse's longtime vision for his namesake school.

The school took possession of the new building in August, just in time for fall classes, and dedicated it in September. By October--maybe--Newhouse Dean David Rubin can catch his breath.

One of longest-serving journalism deans in office, Rubin used the springboard of the Newhouse family's $15 million gift to raise the remainder of the new building's $31.6 million price tag. As the high-tech equipment attests, Rubin enters his 18th year riding a remarkable wave of change.

Certainly it's a far cry from the school he inherited.

"When I got here in 1990, we had one laboratory that had computers," Rubin recalls. "The machines in there--only two members of the faculty knew what to do with them, even to fix them or make them work." There was no such thing as an IT department. "We've come from that to a school that is all digital, with 300 machines."

Indeed, much of the technology and many methods of news-gathering represented in Newhouse III didn't even exist five years ago, when it was being conceived. Rubin points out that the faculty, while acknowledging the digital revolution, remains as committed as ever to a core curriculum that embraces writing, reporting, editing, ethics and history. "A lot of the basics have not changed at all," he says. "What's really changed is the new amazing delivery system."

Keeping up with sweeping technological change is just …

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Publication information: Article title: Deans of Change: Keeping Their Schools Current with the Digital Revolution, Raising Enough Money to Make That Happen and Putting Together Diverse Staffs Are among the Challenges Facing the People Who Run the Nation's Journalism and Mass Communication Schools. Contributors: Sheehan, Matthew C. - Author, Mihailidis, Paul - Author. Magazine title: American Journalism Review. Volume: 29. Issue: 5 Publication date: October-November 2007. Page number: 40+. © 2009 University of Maryland. COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group.

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