Communication Studies, Department of

 

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

9-1995

Citation

Journal of the Association for Communication Administration 3 (September 1995), pp. 190-203.

Comments

Used by permission.

Abstract

The following essay discusses the proposed targeting of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Communication Studies for total elimination. The essay describes the department’s demographics, the university’s budget crisis, and the department’s status at its time of peril. The essay reveals how the department learned of the proposal to eliminate it, how the department reacted to the proposed cut, how the administration established an appeals process to the proposed cuts, what explanation and criteria were used to target the department, how the department responded to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affair’s (VCAA) criteria for targeting the department, how the VCAA responded to the department’s written document and testimony at the hearing, what the Budget Reduction Review Committee (BRRC) and the Academic Planning Committee (APC) recommended, and how the department weathered the storm. Finally the essay addresses why it is necessary for our discipline to take an advocacy role and provide some thoughts about how departments can defend themselves from future attacks.

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