Internal Task Force meets with students to discuss merging communication departments

After discussing the possibility of the merger of three communication departments, the IU Internal Task Force on Communication/Media Studies is ready to make recommendations to Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson about reorganizing the departments based on the feedback drawn from countless conversations with students and faculty.

The feasibility of reorganizing the current structure of the School of Journalism, Department of Communication and Culture and Department of Telecommunications is one step forward, but it’s still open for further discussions.

“What we have been doing so far is we’ve met with chairs of the departments, the faculty and students of the departments involved,” said Fred Cate, a distinguished professor at the IU Maurer School of Law who is in charge of the committee.

Cate invited students from all three departments to a meeting Thursday.

“We’ve collected a lot of written information about these programs and competitors’ programs. Now we begin the process of figuring out what those recommendations are going to be,” he said.

Cate added that the committee has not discussed the project yet but focused on “gathering information and feedback.”

He said he expects to get the recommendations to Hanson by graduation in May. But he said the work is far from being done.

“That’s just the beginning of the process,” he said. “We just give the final recommendations, and they will go to the Faculty Council. In order to make the changes and restructure, there are still lots of committees involved in the future process.”

In terms of restructuring the departments, Cate said he did not have any idea so far of what it would be.

Hanson will decide if the recommendations submitted by the Internal Task Force will go to the Faculty Council, and Cate said the time required to implement the process is impossible to determine.

“If they are about reconstructing or combining the schools, it would take a long, long process at different levels,” he said.

Friday is the last day for the committee to collect data. The committee will meet with students from two divisions of the Department of Communication and Culture, and from that point, Cate said they would start looking for answers this weekend.

 — Kevin Wang