The Iowa Gazette - 2000

There are many exciting developments in the department since our last newsletter. Two of them are the additions to our faculty of Kembrew McLeod and Barbara Biesecker, described elsewhere in this newsletter. Another is the working relationship we are developing with the new College of Public Health on campus. I am confident it will lead to some great collaborative research on communication and health. The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the Dean of the Public Health College have approved two new lines to be split between Public Health and Communication Studies. We are in the midst of searches to fill these two lines. One of the new faculty members will be three-quarters in Communication Studies, one-quarter in Public Health. The other will be three-quarters in Public Health, one-quarter in Communication Studies. The former will be a scholar who does research on interpersonal communication and health; the latter will be one whose work is on mediated communication and health. They will add considerably to the course work we offer in these important areas, as well as to our research program.

Another development that we believe is extremely important to the quality of our undergraduate program is the revamping of the department’s production courses that is going on. This effort is being led by Kembrew McLeod. One of the aspects of Kembrew’s background that we found especially attractive last year when we were searching for someone to be in charge of our production program, was his experimentation at the University of Massachusetts in teaching production. He will continue that experimentation here, building on the digital turn in media production and finding innovative ways to inject a more critical component into production classes. The philosophy that Kembrew brings to these courses is that, through the personal computer, most kinds of media production today—video, sound, graphic design, web-based design, and so forth—are becoming accessible to many more people than we ever imagined possible. In addition, more and more college graduates, as they move into the professions, are going to find that they need some sophistication in digital media production. Those people, potentially every liberal arts undergraduate, should have available a “citizen’s guide to media production” from which they learn not only to critically evaluate the media industries and media messages, but also to produce media messages of their own. That philosophy will guide our new digitally-based introductory production course that he is currently developing and will increasingly shape all of the department’s production courses.

Not only are we in the process of overhauling the department’s production courses to meet contemporary demands, but our entire undergraduate curriculum. Students who enter our program in the fall of 2001 will find a much more rigorous and coherent set of requirements for the major. We are convinced that fulfilling these requirements will better prepare students for the 21st century. This curriculum revision is one more example of the reason I have loved being part of this department. The faculty are never content to keep doing things as they have always been done. They are always trying to make their courses, our requirements, and everything else about the department better. The result is a better education for our students. That excites me.

I am also excited by the many honors that our faculty members and students continue to earn, many of which are noted in this newsletter. They indicate to me that our students and faculty are maintaining the top-rank reputation for which this department has long been noted.

One final point that might interest you. We expected a drop in our undergraduate enrollments this fall, after the Film Studies program was moved into the department of Comparative Literature. However, our enrollments have continued to be roughly what they have been for the past half-dozen years. Last fall we had 906 undergraduate majors; this fall we have 880. We also have 79 graduate students, all but two of whom are Ph.D. candidates. Needless to say, all of these students keep our small faculty hopping.

Randy Hirokawa

Note
Don’t forget to send us old photos from your days at Iowa and anecdotes about your experiences here. Send them to Carol Schrage or Sam Becker, co-editors of The Iowa Gazette

The Staff

We haven’t said anything about the staff in recent newsletters, so thought we ought to bring you up-to-date now. In the front office these days you can find Jan Widmer, Jayne Lillig, and Chris Brenneman, Office Manager. Carol Schrage continues as Administrative Assistant and Director of Student Services.

As this The Iowa Gazette goes to press, a chief engineer to replace Bob Olney has been hired, but has not yet started work, so Bob comes in periodically to help out, while Joe Hermanstorfer and Tom Vorwald keep the studios and all of our equipment running. More on the new chief in the next issue of The Iowa Gazette.

A goodly part of our undergraduate advising these days is done by Barbara Welch Breder (‘84), who is also an adjunct faculty member, teaching courses in advertising and culture and supervising much of our internship program.

The Faculty

For some reason, last year we forgot to mention Leslie Baxter’s latest book, coedited with Barbara Montgomery, titled Dialectical Approaches to Studying Personal Relationships (Erlbaum, 1998). Leslie also coathored “Some Possible Directions For Future Research” that was published in Balancing the Secrets of Private Disclosure (Erlbaum, 2000) and “Becoming a Family: Turning Points and Interaction Patterns in the Development of a Blended Family” that appeared in Case Studies in Personal Relationships: Processes and Problems (ITP/Wadsworth, 1999). The first was written with Erin Sahlstein (’00), the second with Dawn Braithwaite. Other 1999 publications were “Perceptions of Dialectrical Contradictions in Turning Points of Development of Blended Families,” with Larry Erbert (‘96), and “Turning Points in the Development of Blended Families ,” with Braithwaite and John Nicholson (‘98), both in The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Her 1997 paper titled “Rethinking Communication in Personal Relationships From a Dialectrical Perspective” was also republished this year in K. Dindia and Steve Duck’s Communication in Personal Relationships. Leslie was appointed to the advisory board of the university’s Social Science Institute this year and to the College of Nursing’s Biobehavioral Nursing Area. Of course the biggest news about Leslie this year is that the university has named her the F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies.

Steve Duck, Daniel and Amy Starch Distinguished Research Professor of Communication Studies, has three new books out since the last Iowa Gazette came out: S.W. Duck (1999). Relating to Others, 2nd ed. (UK: Open University Press; U.S.: Wiley); W. Ickes and S.W. Duck, eds. (2000). The Social Psychology of Personal Relations. (UK: Wiley); and R.S.L. Mills and S.W. Duck, eds. (2000). The Developmental Psychology of Personal Relationships (UK: Wiley). He also authored or co-authored seven papers published in collections: “Embracing the Social in Personal Relationships and Social Psychology” and “Personal Relationships and Social Psychology” published in his and Ickes’ collection, “Sowing Relational Seeds: Contexts for Relating in Childhood” and “The Developmental Psychology of Relationships in Children” that appeared in his and Mills’ collection, “Betrayal” published in Braithwaite and Woods’ Case Studies in Interprsonal Communication (Wiley, 1999), “Uses of Profanity in Everyday Communication” in Kowalski’s Inappropriate Social Interaction (APA 2000), and “Mobilizing Support in Chronic Illness: A Relationship Perspective” in Stewart’s Chronic Conditions and Care-Giving: Does Support Help? (U of Toronto Press, 2000). Not surprisingly, a study on the progress and trends in the study of close relationships found him to be the 4th most-cited relationships scholar in the 20th century. During his research leave last year, he says he “learned to read Enlightenment and Medieval Latin clerical documents pertaining to family disputes, court proceedings, and inheritance, plus been learning the ways in which geographical features of the landscape had a ‘rhetoric’ in the conduct of relationships in pre-19th century England.”

Kristine Fitch used the second semester of her University of Iowa Global Scholar award to collect data on interpersonal communication, personal relationships, and nationalism in Madrid, Spain. This work fits with her interest in the intersections of culture in public and private life. While in Europe she lectured at the European Worldviews conference in La-Londe-les-Maures, France, and at the Universidad de Valencia in Spain.

Kathleen Farrell was one of a select group of scholars invited to Hope College (MI) last summer to lay out an ideal set of curricula for communication studies departments in liberal arts colleges.

Bruce Gronbeck, our A. Craig Baird Distinguished Professor of Public Address, received a flood of new honors this past year. He received the 1999 Great Communicator Award from the Communication and Theatre Association of Minnesota at the organization’s fall meeting on Bruce’s undergraduate campus, Concordia College (MN). A month-and-a-half later, at the National Communication Association convention, he was presented with the American Forensic Association’s Scholar in Argumentation Award. (This was in addition to the NCA’s Distinguished Service Award that we mentioned in the last issue.) The AFA award was given to the five American scholars adjudged to having made the most important contributions to the field in the period 1949-1999. About that same time, the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland) announced that it would make Bruce an honorary Doctor of Social Science at its June 2000 solemn conferment ceremony. He returned from Finland with two parts of the Finnish doctoral costume, a silk top hat and a sword, which are meant to be worn with tails. (You can get a peek at the costume on Bruce’s website, http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/faculty/Gronbeck.) He finished the year addressing a Salzburg (Austria) Seminar devoted to the topic, “Political Leadership and Media Democracy.” Scholars from twenty countries were present to hear Bruce’s presentations of his work on mass-mediated politics and political campaigning on the internet. Finally, Bruce and Malcolm Sillar’s (’55) book, Communication Criticism: Rhetoric, Social Codes, Cultural Studies, came out late this year.

Hanno Hardt’s newest book, edited with S. Splichel, is Tonies on Public Opinion: Selections and Analyses (Roman & Littlefield, pub.)

The biggest news about Joy Hayes this past year is that she was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Her book, Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 2000) came out. She also had a paper in the May issue of the Journal of Radio Studies titled “Did Herbert Hoover Broadcast the First Fireside Chat? Rethinking the Origins of Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats.”

Randy Hirokawa had the thrill of being introduced by one of his former students, Karen Dace (’90) when he presented the B. Aubrey Fisher Memorial Lecture at the University of Utah last year. The title of his lecture, which has been published by Utah, was “From the Tiny Pond to the Big Ocean: Studying Communication and Group Decision-making Effectiveness from a Functional Perspective.” Karen is currently an Associate Provost at Utah. If you’re a college teacher and have some bright undergraduates, you may want to have them apply for the 2001 National Undergraduate Honors Conference for Communication Arts and Sciences at DePauw University. Randy will be one of the resident scholars for that conference in March, working with the students who submit papers in group or interpersonal communication.

George Klingler, in his words, has decided to hang it up. He retired this fall and plans to move to Arizona.

John Peters spent the spring semester in the Department of Media and Communication at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, which he reports is the mecca of contemporary cultural studies. He was on a fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust to study the philosophical and historical foundations of the public sphere.

Joanna Ploeger was on a grant last summer from the university’s Arts & Humanities Initiative to do archival research at Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Complex. This work is part of her continuing study of how the sciences communicate with the public. She is chairing a panel on this topic at this year’s National Communication Association meeting.

Eric Rothenbuhler’s latest book, Communication and Community, that he co-edited with former faculty member Greg Shepherd has just been published by LEA. He was also an invited speaker at the University of Southern California/Inside Internet Radio conference in April. He spoke on the reasons music programming is critical to internet radio. (Some of us old WSUI-ers still can’t get our heads around the idea of radio on the internet. In fact, we’re still not even sure about cable radio.) Eric is currently combining his work on ritual, community, and media industries to look at the social and cultural history of popular music in new ways.

Bob Newman was honored by the National Communication Association this year when he was named an NCA Distinguished Scholar. During the summer he keynoted the 34th Conference on Rhetorical Criticism at California State University/Hayward. The title of his talk was “The Clash of Civilizations: Can There Be Rhetorical Amelioration?” Bob also published three papers, one in a journal and two in edited collections.

To celebrate the Golden Anniversary of Communication Studies this past year, the journal of the Central States Communication Association, the editor honored four of what he labeled “the most influential scholars in the central region (USA) over the past fifty years” by devoting the bulk of one issue to each. Two of those scholars were Iowa Ph.D.s: the late Gerald Miller (’61) and Sam Becker (’47, ’49, ’53). In the Becker issue he published Sam’s keynote address to the 1999 joint meeting of the Central States and Southern States Communication Associations. Its title is “Looking Forward, Looking Back: A Personal Perspective. He also reprinted Sam’s 1971 paper, “Rhetorical Studies for the Contemporary World,” along with four contemporary essays on its significance. These critiques were by John Bowers (’62), Leah Vande Berg (’81), Bruce Gronbeck (’70), and Ron Carpenter, Professor of English at the University of Florida. Sam continues to be active on university committees and task forces. He is on the university’s Task Force on Strategic Communication, the Task Force on Graduation Rates, the Task Force on the Organization of Men’s and Women’s Athletics Programs at the University of Iowa, and chaired the search committee for a new Special Assistant to the President. He also is president of the Emeritus Faculty Council and on the Board of Directors of Humanities Iowa, our state-wide humanities organization. He keynoted this year’s annual meeting of the Iowa Communication Association and chaired the International Communication Association’s Research Awards Committee.

Former Faculty

In case you have wondered what happened to some of our former faculty members, we can tell you that John Lyne is the new chair of the Communication Department at the University of Pittsburgh, Patti Gillespie retired from the University of Maryland to the wilds of northern New York State, Dave Schaal retired from the University of Iowa to Oberlin, OH, while Dave Thayer and Cosmo Catalano retired from Iowa and wisely decided to remain in Iowa City. So you can still see them when you come through town. On the other hand, still in Solon, IA, Donovan Ochs retired, but did not retire. Although retired from the Communication Studies and Rhetoric departments, he continues to teach speech courses periodically for the College of Business Administration. John Bowers has moved to Bend, OR.

PAUL SLAPPEY
We are sorry to report that Paul Slappey (’86) finally succumbed to the cancer that he had been battling for the past half dozen years. Paul was the enthusiastic coordinator, supporter, promoter, and fund-raiser deluxe for our forensics program for over a decade and the developer of our current highly successful summer forensics workshops for high school students. No one since Craig Baird believed more firmly than Paul in the value of forensics for students, and no one since Craig worked harder to make that experience available to more students. We miss him.

An endowment has been established with gifts that have been made in memory of Paul and those that will be made in the future. Proceeds from this endowment will generally be used for Paul Slappey Summer High School Forensics Workshop Scholarships. This fall, though, the first Slappey Scholarship was awarded to Juanita Wilson, a first-year student from Chicago. She is a graduate of Morgan Park High School and an active participant in the Chicago Debate Commission project to revitalize interscholastic debate in the Chicago Public Schools. That project is one which Iowa debate supporters Betty Wilhoite and President Emeritus Sandy Boyd have worked hard to realize.

New Faculty Members

Kembrew McLeod
A man with the wonderful name, Kembrew McLeod, is the newest addition to our faculty. Kembrew has degrees from James Madison, Virginia, and Massachusetts. His teaching and research interests are wide-ranging, but center in media studies. The book based on his dissertation, completed at the University of Massachusetts, has already been accepted for publication by Peter Lang Publishing. Its title is Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership and Intellectual Property Law. A paper based on the dissertation that he presented at the National Communication Association’s annual meeting was the Commission on Freedom of Expression’s “Top Competitive Paper.”

Kembrew has had professional experience as a writer, as well as a video producer. In addition to papers in scholarly journals and books, he has 35 entries in the five volume St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, some in All Music Guide to Rock: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Recordings in Rock, Pop, Soul, R&B, and Rap (2nd ed.), and has had roughly 400 articles and stories in publications such as Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix, Raygun, Sonic Net, Addicted to Noise, SMUG, and Real Groove.

Barbara Biesecker
Barbara is not new to the department, she has been on campus, teaching courses in which many of our graduate students enrolled, advising graduate students, serving on doctoral committees, and so forth, even though she held only a 0% appointment in Communication Studies. As of the latter part of this semester, she has a 50% appointment in the department, with the other 50% in the Rhetoric department. Now, she will be teaching undergraduate, as well as graduate courses, and becoming even more heavily involved in departmental affairs than she was before.

Barbara earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Her major teaching and research interests are in visual (material) rhetorics, feminist thought, and post-structuralist theory. She has one book that is already in print, Addressing Postmodernity: Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric, and a Theory of Social Change (U of Alabama Press, 1997), and a goodly number of articles and book chapters. She will be an asset to our students and the department.

Bob Olney Retires
After three decades handling engineering problems for our radio, television, and film operation, the last twenty-seven years as Chief Engineer, Bob Olney decided to hang it up this summer. We have not let him retire completely, though; we continue to call him in when we need help with a tough problem. Bob supervised the steady growth in amount and complexity of electronic equipment on which our teaching and research programs depend. His expertise and conscientiousness have been invaluable in helping us select and maintain equipment for our operation. He supervised the complicated move of our technical facilities from the Old Armory to our new Communication Studies Building in 1984 in such smooth fashion that we never had to cancel a class. And above all, he has been a great colleague, as these few quotations from the many letters sent to him by former students and faculty members at the time of his retirement attest.

“I find that some of my fondest university memories are those I spent in the studio and your positive attitude, patience, and sense of humor contributed greatly to my experience.”
Judith McManus (’72, ’83), CEO of Judith McManus & Associates

“You expected people to apply themselves and respected them for doing so. And you managed through your sense of humor to enjoy the students and be so patient with us—even with all of our crazy projects.”
John Wesley Blackman (’88), Falls Church, VA

“Some of my least stressful times as a student were spent sitting across from you at your desk in the Engineering office, just chatting about nothing. Made me feel like a regular person, instead of just a student.”
Jim Levi (’94), Minneapolis

“I appreciate your skills even more now that I am at another institution; we could use you.”
Sarah Stein (’93,’97), Professor of Communication, North Carolina State U.

“I cannot imagine the department without you. . . . The warm support and friendship that I received from people like you, Carol, and Chris made my days at Iowa.”
Emperatriz Arreasa Camero ’93), Professor of Communication, Venezuela

“Your title should have been ‘Chaos Manager and Resident Therapist,’ for no matter how dire the situation or what kind of intradepartmental political pressures were being put on you to fix this or that, you always approached the situation at hand in an egalitarian and level-headed fashion that has been an inspiration for how I aspire to interact with people and solve problems.”
Jim Walker (’84), Professor and Chair of Communication, Saint Xavier U., Chicago.

“You are the best in the business . . . a decent man in an indecent world.”
Dudley Andrew (’72), Professor, Yale University

We in the department agree with all of those comments and more. We appreciate the way Bob calmly put up with all of the foibles of faculty members and students, acting as though the rest of us knew what we were doing when, quite frequently, it was obvious that we did not. He treated all of us—students, faculty, and staff—as though we were sane.

OUR STUDENTS

The new President of the university’s student government is Andy Stoll, a sophomore major. Last year Andy was Vice President. This year he won election to the top slot. He is working hard on a number of important student issues.

As you probably know, we have two organizations on this campus that each year induct the top upperclass student leaders, ODK (Omicron Delta Kappa) and Mortar Board. Years ago, the former was just for men, the latter just for women. Now, official campus organizations cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, so both take in men and women. As a result, two of our students last spring, Elizabeth Wehlre and Jayme Flander were inducted into both ODK and Mortar Board. In addition, Jia Tyan Diana Hu was initiated into ODK.

We also had three students inducted into the scholarship honorary, Phi Beta Kappa: Jennifer Elizabeth Anderson, Steven Gartz, and Sarah Huisenga.

The Douglas Ehninger Award for outstanding teaching by a graduate student last year went to David McMahan.
A number of our undergraduate students won special scholarships from the department this year. The C. Jay Starr Fellowship was won by Denise Jodlowski, the Jerome Feniger Fellowship by Scott Sabin, and the Cristen M. Loza de Bigley Award by Chris Lake.

Five students won Orville Hitchcock Undergraduate Excellence Awards: Jennifer Anderson, Jared Hohl, Jeffrey Houghton, Kasey Koeopfer, and Michelle Nebergall. The Lowden Oratorical Award went to Brian Severson.

Two of our graduate students are Carroll Arnold Fellows this year, Wendy Hilton-Morrow and Lise VanderVoort. Kathy Battles is our Ramona Matson Fellow. A paper that Kathy presented at this year’s International Communication Association meeting in Acapulco, by the way, was judged to be one of the top three student papers.

We are pleased to report that twenty of our students won Clay Harshbarger travel grants during the last fiscal year to help with their expenses to national and regional meetings where they presented scholarly papers: Scott Benjamin, Tom Burkhart, Kate Cady, Jung Bong Choi, Dan DeGooyer, David Deifell, Wade Davis, Dan Emery, Irene Grau, Chul Heo, Evelyn Ho, Edgar Johnson, Brian Lain, David McMahan, Danna Prather, Erin Sahlstein, Vesta Silva, Kathleen Valde, and Jon Wiebel.

Although he has not yet completed and defended his dissertation, Martti Lahti wrote to tell us that he was appointed a Professor of Cultural Industries at the University of Lapland. His main responsibility, he says, is to build and run a 3D animation research and development laboratory in the university.

Larissa Faulkner was reelected last spring as the Executive of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, which also made her a member of the Executive Cabinet of the University of Iowa Student Government.

The Ph.D. Job Market
We hooded ten new Ph.D.s in the past year, all but one of whom are now busily teaching. The tenth chose to have a baby instead—just before defending her dissertation—and is spending the year taking care of her children. That’s Kristin Doleman Charles, Interpersonal Communication, adviser Hirokawa. Kristin is living in Green Bay, WI. Others who finished in the past twelve months are:
Carlos Aleman, Interpersonal Communication, adviser Hirokawa, now at James Madison U.
Steven Schwarze, Rhetorical Studies, adviser Poulakos, is at Montana State U.
Jim McDaniel, Rhetorical Studies, advisers Gronbeck and McGee, U of Colorado.
Erin Sahlstein, Interpersonal Communication, adviser Duck, U. of Richmond
Shih-che Tang, Media Studies, adviser Saenz, Nanhua U., Taiwan
David Hoffman, Rhetorical Studies, adviser Poulakos, Temple.
Kathleen Valde, Interpersonal Communication, adviser Baxter, Northern Illinois U.
Dan DeGooyer, Interpersonal Communication, adviser Baxter, U. of North Carolina, Greenboro.
Jsin-I Liu, Media Studies, adviser Peters, Open University in Hong Kong.

ORVILLE AND MAUDE HITCHCOCK

DISTINGUISHED LECTURE
The first of our Orville and Maude Hitchcock Distinguished Lectures was presented on campus in April. The lecturer, Professor Steve Fuller of the University of Warwick (UK), spoke on the topic, “The Future of Rhetoric of Science. Fuller’s most recent book is Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (U of Chicago Press, 2000). The lecture was a great success.

Sadly, three weeks after this inaugural lecture, the major promoter and supporter to date of this lecture series to honor Professor and Mrs. Hitchcock, Bob Jeffrey (’49, ’50, ’57) died. He had a distinguished career. During his eleven years as chair of the University of Texas’ Department of Communication Studies and fourteen years as dean of its College of Communication, he brought both of those units to major national prominence. He also held almost every possible leadership post in the National Communication Association. The University of Texas has established the Robert C. Jeffrey Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Communication Studies in his honor.

Alums of the ‘30s & ‘40s

You who were here during World War II and immediately after will remember Helen Caro (’46) as a wonderful actress, on radio as well as stage. We just learned that she still is. Watch for the release this spring of The Visitor. She says she had two days work on the film, “screaming and being hysterical,” and played an old Ukranian Woman on an independent film. Helen is also acting in recreations of old radio shows being done by the Chicago SAG/AFTRA Senior Committee at the Museum of Broadcasting in Chicago.

The Center for Media Literacy in Los Angeles presented a special “Visionary” award last year to Norman Felton (’40, ’41). In her presentation, the director of the center said of Norman: When others have seen problems, Norman Felton has seen possibilities. And he has worked and contributed to turn those possibilities into realities. This is a true visionary. Some of us at Iowa have known this about Norman for a long time.

Ed “Jenks” Jenkins (’43) is doing a great job of keeping us informed of the whereabouts of many of our alums from the early 40s—at least those who worked at WSUI. The latest ones he wrote about are Paul Downing (’43) who is retired in Hot Springs Village, near Hot Springs, AK and Carol McConaha Rhodes (’43), who is writing a regular newspaper column under the name Connie Kay. We can’t remember whether she used that name on the programs she did on WSUI.

We had not heard from Lois Lee Jones (’33, ’39) for a long time, so we were pleased to receive a note from her this year. She is retired from teaching and living in Houston, TX.

Another long-quiet graduate is Ortha Neff (’40). After a long and varied career, she is retired back here in Iowa City. She taught school in Charter Oak and Knoxville after earning her degree and then joined the Red Cross when World War II broke out. After some time in Hawaii, she spent the bulk of her service time in a hospital on Okinawa. From the end of the war until her retirement, she served as a Girl Scout executive throughout the United States and in Germany, France, and Italy. We are pleased to have her back in town.

We were proud to see that Tom Pawley (’39, ’49), Dean Emeritus at Lincoln University, received the Black Theatre Network Executive Board’s Fletcher Award for his achievements in Black theatre scholarship. We assume that his considerable achievements as a playwright were also a factor in the thinking of the board.

Gale Richards (’42, ’50), Professor Emeritus at Arizona State, was stimulated to write after our last newsletter, in which we had a feature on Beverly Barnes Fix (’40), to tell us that while they were both in school he was married to that “fabulously good-looking” woman—but only on a radio soap opera on WSUI. Did we detect a bit of regret in that last clause?

Joe Sitrick (’43) seems to be another one of those graduates who refuses to stop work. Joe, who splits his time between New York and Florida, continues to work as a broadcast station broker, although he says he’s taking more time off these days. Joe was back this year for the annual meeting of the President’s Club.

The graduate who wrote from the furthest away this year is Margaret Benson Virkkunen (’45), now a resident of Helsinki. She maintained her interest in communication by being, among other things, a contributing author to the guidebook, Helsinki in a Shopping Bag. She is a founding member of the American Women’s Club of Helsinki and was the first American Vice-President of the Finish-American Society’s Ladies Club. As Margaret’s last name suggests, she moved to Finland when she married Veli Virkunen, now the foremost World War II historian in Finland and a pioneer in the development of television in that country.

GREAT SPEECHES IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Not long ago, we came across some old radio scripts that Clay Harsharger wrote and directed in the late 1930s and early ‘40s for a series he titled “Great Speeches in American History.” Among the many students involved were Burton Bridgens (’41), Hayes Newby (’39, ’47), and Mary Weaver Evans (’42). If you were in some of these dramatizations and want to see the scripts, we put them in the Clay Harshbarger archive in the University Library. Some of these scripts could probably be used today to enliven a course in American Public Address.

Alums of the ‘50s

Chuck Balcer (’49, ’54), after retiring from the presidency of Augustana College, has become the President and CEO of the Evangelical Lutheran Society in Sioux Falls, SD.

We were pleased to see another television mystery on the Arts and Entertainment channel in December authored by Gene Wilder (’55) and Gil Pearlman (’51), with Gene starring as the theatre director and amatuer detective. This one was titled The Lady in Question. There is no question that Gene and Gil have turned out to be a great writing team. We are hoping that Gil also gets an acting role in the next episode of this series.

We did not receive much news this year from you graduates of the ‘50s, but we dug up some photographs of two of you and a ’48 graduate that appeared in a brochure about WSUI/KSUI during the 1949-50 academic year. We believe some of you may enjoy these.

[photos of Milo Hamilton, Jack Davis, and Bob Morrison with cut lines]

CLIFF BERKEY
Those of you who were denizens of the Old Armory in the 1950s and early ‘60s will remember our old janitor, Cliff Berkey. He was renowned for spotting students who did not seem to be eating properly and taking them to his home for a good meal and some of his wonderful home-made wine. He also supplied university toilet paper and light bulbs to married students who were hard up. Cliff, who is now in his mid to late 90s, is living in the health center at the Oaknoll Retirement Residence in Iowa City. He is terribly hard of hearing and spends most of his time sleeping, but is still sharp. He greatly appreciates the periodic letters he receives from some of you, so we hope you keep writing. He asked us to thank you. If any of the rest of you want to write, his address is 701 Oaknoll Drive, Iowa City, IA 52246.

Alums of the ‘60s

Jim Anderson (’65) has a new book out that he wrote with Elaine Englehardt, an ethicist. Its title: The Organizational Self and Ethical Conduct; Harcourt is the publisher. He says its major contribution is to theorize resistance as an organizational resource. He recently finished another project that we find quite interesting. He had students write a textbook for an introduction to communication course and then use the materials they developed. Jim says this was “an application of postmodern concepts of knowledge and power and internet technology.” At last summer’s meeting of the International Communication Association, Jim was reelected chair of the community of ICA Fellows.

Many of our former students, we are pleased to say, tell us that their experiences at Iowa changed their lives. No one is more adamant in that claim than Orazio “Roger” Fumagalli (‘63). He says that the learning experience offered by our department “was, for me, a mind-expanding experience which enlarged me and made possible all of my future work.” That’s saying quite a lot, because he has done some great work during the years since he completed his Ph.D. with us. Orazio came to the department from the field of art and returned to that field after his degree. He became the founding director of the University of Wisconsin/Stout department of art and developed it into the largest department of art in the UW system. During all of that time and afterward, to this day, he has continued to be a productive sculptor. His figure fragments, that have been exhibited in museums throughout the world, have been described as “a celebration of human life.” When he retired from the university, the chancellor said that “he helped Stout become the broader definition of what a true university is.” We are proud that Roger shares credit for all of that with our department.

Another of our graduates of the sixties has made quite a difference at California State University in Long Beach. Luster Hauth (’62) and his wife Audrey, through a million-dollar Charitable Remainder Trust, have established the Luster E. and Audrey Nichol Hauth Center for Communication Skills at the university. The center will be devoted to helping students and faculty hone their speaking and lecturing skills. Lus taught at Long Beach for 28 years before retiring in 1992.

Larry Hutchins’ (’60, ’61, ‘65) newest responsibility is being Senior Adviser for Achievement and Accountability in the St. Louis public schools. We understand that he also is playing the euphonium in the Compton Heights (MO) Concert Band and the St. Louis Schools Faculty Ensemble.

In honor of Bob Miller’s (‘60) 27 years as the play-by-play television announcer for the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, the press box in Staples Center (home of the L.A. Kings and the recent Democratic National Convention) has been named the “Bob Miller Press Box.”

We just learned that Janet Norberg (’64) has retired after a long and successful teaching career at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. Since retiring she and her family moved to Sioux Falls, SD. Janet reports that she is also a member of Campers on a Mission, which is similar to Habitat for Humanity. Her group, though, moves to areas of need in RVs.

Joe Zesbaugh (’66) reports that he is planning to retire from the presidency of American Public Television later this year and move to San Diego so that he can get his tennis game back in shape. He will move as soon as someone else is found to run what has become the second largest provider of programming to public television stations (about 2500 hours a year).

A Memory Test

The photo below should test the memory of you who were at Iowa in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. It was shot from the front of the projection room in the Old Armory. We’ll give you just a few clues. Among the many faces there that should be familiar to you are Don Marine, Dave Thayer, and Bob Snyder. Can you spot them? Who else can you see?

Memories of Professor Donald Bryant

Don Marine (’62) has responded to our request for interesting stories about graduates’ time at Iowa with one of his most vivid memories. Don says:

“I think it was my first summer of graduate school when I learned the meaning of ‘silence is golden’ or ‘when you don’t have a clue, shut up!’ My best friend, Gerry Miller (‘61), encouraged me to enroll in Classical Rhetoric taught by Donald C. Bryant. I was concerned because Professor Bryant made me tremble. His esteemed scholarly achievements and reputation for expecting the same from his students evoked considerable pause and anxiety.

So there I sat each day in Schaeffer Hall, competing for favor with future Hall-of-Famers Gerry Miller, John Bowers (‘62), Lloyd Bitzer (‘62), Walter Fisher (‘60), and the happy giant, Robert Bostrom (‘61). The Greek duo of Harry Zavos (‘66) and John Vlandis (’56,‘62) were there as well. Perhaps Orazio Fumagalli (‘63) ventured across the river for this class also, I’m not sure. All, save me, were Ph.D. candidates. All, save me, were steeped in the warm-up knowledge of rhetorical theory needed to stay afloat in the C of Bryant.

One day Professor Bryant leaned back in his chair, threw his feet up to a pulled-out drawer, and gradually grew a George W. Bush-like smirk on his face before asking, “What is the difference between a trope and an epicheirema?” No one answered. Everyone avoided eye contact with each other and, particularly, with Professor Bryant. Even he noticed the obvious demur as his eyes left the ceiling and searched about for a victim. I decided to fake an epiphany. What the hell, with this group it might be my only chance to make a contribution—to make my mark.

Contribute I did. I won’t pretend to remember my exact answer. Something about using the trope to amplify or embellish and the epicyreme in some other way. I think it was the only time that summer that I had the full, albeit stunned, attention of my colleagues. I certainly made my mark!

Professor Bryant allowed the brutal silence to continue a few moments as the Bush-like smirk widened. He resumed the tilt of his chair, eyes returning to the ceiling cracks, as he said, ‘Gentlemen [there were no ladies in the class], there you have a perfect example of how a wrong answer can be remarkably more interesting than the correct one.’”

Don Marine is a former teacher and public relations executive in Peoria, IL.

Alums of the ‘70s

The Iowa/Iowa State football game this year was a downer in some ways, but an upper in others for it brought Sharon Curry Baskerville (’71) back to town and we were delighted to see her. Sharon is now the administrator over middle schools and high schools in Ann Arbor, MI.

We were also pleased to see a large photo of Chuck Berg (’73) in a summer issue of The University Daily Kansan. Chuck, still a faculty member in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of Kansas, has taken the cultural turn that many of our faculty in the media have. He’s using film to help students understand the culture of different eras.

Speaking of film, no film scholar in the country is arousing more interest and argument these days than David Bordwell (’72, ’74), the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin. He was featured in both The Chronicle of Higher Education and Lingua Franca recently. The Chronicle interviewed him about his new Harvard University Press book, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. Lingua Franca, in an article titled “David Bordwell Blows the Whistle on Film Studies,” focusses on Dave’s criticism of the faddish tendencies of many film scholars. One scholar quoted in the article says that “David Bordwell is the world’s leading film scholar. He simply knows more about motion pictures and the phenomenon of cinema than any other living human being.”

Pat Connolly (’73, ’79), an administrator in the department of Otolaryngology here at Iowa, hung it up in April. We assume he is staying in Iowa City, as most retirees from the university do, but do not yet know for certain. Meanwhile, though, he has made certain the Connolly tradition lives on. His son David is a Media Studies student in the department.

We want you to know that you can now read Jan Elsea (’72) in Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, or French, as well as English. Her book, First Impression, Best Impression is available in all of those languages. Jan, as we announced in a recent Iowa Gazette, is still President of Communication Skills, Inc. in Phoenix.

Rebecca Gregory (’74) earned her Senior Professional in Human Resources Certification last year. She is currently the Human Resource Manager of Atlanta Precision Molding L.L.C. in Duluth, GA.

John Kline (’70) retired in March as Provost of the United States Air Force’s Air University and accepted a position as Professor of Education at Troy State University (AL). The Air Force will probably contract with Troy State, though, so John can continue to do some teaching at Air University.

Another recent young retiree is Manny Lucoff (’71). He retired from the University of South Florida where he was a Professor of Mass Communication. He and Pat are still living in Tampa.

One of the new members of the Texas Council for the Humanities is Virginia Mampre (’71), since 1984 the President/Owner of Mampre Media International in Houston.

Mike Norton (’69, ’71) is currently the Director of Sales for the Institutional Markets Group of the PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. in San Francisco. He tells us that he counts among his major successes in life surviving the 1960s in Iowa City and still being alive.

Dick Ranta (’74), who is still Dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts at the University of Memphis, received the American Communication Association’s Award for Outstanding Service to the discipline. Dick keeps many balls in the air. He is the Executive Director of the Southern States Communication Association and, for the past eighteen years, has been part of a team that records the Grammy Awards as seen on CBS.

Watch PBS on January 12, 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for Churchill Roberts’ newest documentary, Freedom Never Dies. Its subject is Harry T. Moore, the first civil rights worker killed by the KKK.

We had a delightful visit this summer with Jim Rockey (’71) who, according to his account, has “reinvented” himself once again. He has a cookie-making business—jimmyrockey’s cookies—in Fort Lauderdale, FL and is a professional entertainer, playing music of the ‘30s and ‘40s on his old-time ukuleles. His manager is Tal Russell (‘68), now retired from many years of teaching theatre.

Jack Rovner (‘77) is the General Manager and Executive Vice President of RCA Records.
The new President and Publisher of “the newspaper all Iowa depends on,” The Des Moines Register, is none other than our own Mary

Parks Stier (’78). Mary moved to Des Moines from Rockford (IL) where she was publisher of the Rockford Register and Vice President of the Gannett chain for which she supervised a group of midwest newspapers.

This is probably old news for some of you, but we just learned that Tom Schatz (’74, ’76) has been chair of Radio-Televison-Film at the University of Texas for the past four years.

Suzanne Sell (’73, ’75) writes that she signed up this summer with Crown Media International (aka Hallmark Entertainment Networks) as Vice President of Research and Media Planning. She was stimulated to write because she came across our departmental web page and saw all of the familiar faces. (That web page, for you who have not seen it, can be found at http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/

We recently learned, indirectly, that Hale Starr’s (79) company, Starr Litigation Services has just opened a new office in Washington, D.C.
Chuck Tardy (’79) has decided to have a go at academic administration. He is the new chair of the Speech Communication Department at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The new Van der Ahe Professor of Communication and Ethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles is Larry Wenner (’77). He says it will be a great opportunity for him to refocus his work in communication and media on issues of social responsibility and to engage the Hollywood film and television community in public programs to reflect on creative and institutional performance.

Iowa Summer Writing Festival

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival this year featured two of our graduates on its faculty and saw the return of at least one other graduate as a student. Carol Maxwell Gorman (’73), author of thirty-two published children’s novels has taught novel writing in the Iowa summer workshop for the past four or five years. Her novels have been translated into four languages and received numerous awards, including the Ethical Culture Book Award, American Booksellers Association Pick of the Lists, New York City Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age, and the International Reading Association’s Children’s and Young Adults’ Choice lists. Her most recent books, all published by HarperCollins, are Dork in Disguise, The Miraculous Makeover of Lizard Flanagan, and Lizard Flanagan, Supermodel. Carol lives in Cedar Rapids.

Our other graduate on the Festival faculty this summer was Venise Berry (’77, ’79). The title of Venise’s workshop was “Writing the Popular Novel.” Her first novel, So Good: An African American Love Story (1996) was an Essence Magazine Blackboard National Bestseller. Her second, All of Me, A Voluptuous Tale, which came out this year, is also doing extremely well. In a recently published interview, Venise responded to the question of what inspires her to write. We think you will find her response interesting:

I am very concerned about the images I see in the media when it comes to African American men and women. I believe the media play a major role in how we define ourselves in today’s society. When the primary role models for Black people, especially youth, are gangsters, criminals, hoochie mamas and hoes, I believe there is a significant impact on our mental state. . . . In their own small way, my books are an effort to address and balance out the stereotypes and negatives that exist.

Venise is still on the faculty of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Attending this year’s Iowa Summer Writing Festival was Karl Harshbarger, who is now living in Germany and writing full time. If you run into him, you old timers will be struck by how much he looks and sounds like his father, Clay Harshbarger—or “Doc” Harshbarger as his students at WSUI used to call him.

Victoria Cunha (’86) was also enrolled in this summer’s festival. She is currently living in Chicago.

Alums of the ‘80s

Elizabeth “Karen” Altman (’87) not long ago decided that one doctoral degree was not enough. So she earned a second one, a Psy.D. in psychoanalysis, and is now in private practice in Pasadena, CA.

Michael Andrews (’85) is a film editor for Dreamworks. He currently lives in San Francisco.

If you have not yet read Slaves in the Family (’98), winner of the National Book Award for non-fiction, you should do so. Its author is Edward Ball (’84), who now lives in Charleston, SC. Ed writes that the book is currently being turned into a television miniseries by Turner Network Television.

Jim Bavendam (’87) told us that his company, Bavendam Research Inc., recently finished its first project in China via the Internet. He has also done several projects in Latin America the same way. Jim says one of his most challenging tasks has been to make large path analyses understandable and useful to folks in business and industry. [Of course, some of us encounter the same problem trying to make them understandable and useful to students.] If you would like to know more about Bavendam Research Inc., you can check out its web page: http://www.bavendam.com/pdf/Bri system improvement process.pdf.

Last winter, the governor of Iowa hosted a luncheon for the five finalists in the Iowa Teacher of the Year competition. One of those five great teachers, we are pleased to tell you, was Virginia “Ginny” Darby (’80), who teaches speech at Dubuque (IA) Senior High School.

Our stereotype of bankers changed for the better when we discovered that Laura Johnson (’86) is Vice President of the Fifth Third Bank in Gurnee, IL.

The brokerage division of The Habitat Company, a real estate company in Chicago, sent us an announcement congratulating Kim Kerbis (’89) for being one of the company’s top producers. Habitat’s CEO says she is “one of the most professional agents” he has ever known. Shortly after receiving that, Kim wrote to say she is forsaking Habitat and the midwest to join her husband in California. She expects to pursue a real estate license there.

Michael Korpi (’77, ’83) is chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Baylor.

Gloria Monti (’87) moved this fall from the Department of Audio/Video/Film at Hofstra to the Film Studies Department at the University of California/Irvine.

Arizona State University this past year promoted Tom Nakayama (’88) to full professor.

Lorrie Oreck (’88) teaches at North Hennepin Community College in Minnesota. She is currently serving as Campus Grievance Representative and is on the Negotiations Committee for the teachers union, the Minnesota Community College Faculty Association, a branch of the NEA.

We keep trying to get Ann Selzer (’84) to return to Iowa City for a visit, but she is busy running all over the country, as you can tell from the list of some of the clients of Selzer & Co.: The Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, Daily Breeze (in California), and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Besides being a partner in the Snell & Wilmber law firm in Phoenix, Heidi McNeil Staudenmaier (’81) is President of the Maricopa County (Phoenix) Bar Association. She also edited Changing Jobs: A Handbook for Lawyers in the New Millenium and Beyond (1999), published jointly by the American and Maricopa County Bar Associations.

Kristina Venzke (’89), Director of Programming for Humanities Iowa for the past few years, recently accepted a position as Research Project Director in the university’s new College of Public Health.

Seven of the former presidents of the National Communication Association who participated in the last convention have Iowa ties. Shown here, in the front row, are Lloyd Bitzer (’62), Bruce Gronbeck (’70), Dennis Gouran (’68); back row, the late Bob Jeffrey (’57), Sam Becker (’53), Patti Gillespie (former faculty member), and Mal Sillars (’55). Other Iowans who are still around who have been president of the NCA are Herman Cohen (‘48, ‘49, ‘54 ) and John Bowers (‘62 ).

News of the University and Iowa City

One of the major pieces of news in town is that the last of the old-time movie houses in downtown Iowa City closed last year. That was the Englert Theatre, the largest and most grand of all of the local movie theatres. Prior to becoming a movie house, it had been a legitimate theatre where many of the great stars in the early half of the 20th century, including Sarah Bernhardt, played. A group of townspeople and university folks decided that the building should be saved and turned back into a performing space for plays and concerts. They raised the money and, with some help from the city, bought it. Now, additional funds are being sought to restore the theatre. Within a few years, when you return to Iowa City, we hope you will be able to see the new Englert Theatre in all of its resurrected glory.

You who were involved in theatre while at Iowa will also be interested to know that the Liberal Arts College has formed a Division of Performing Arts that includes Music and Dance, as well as the Theatre Arts Department. The three units have been cooperating on opera and other productions for a great many years, but even more so since the university formed a professional performing arts production unit to help with much of the technical work. The new organization, chaired initially by David Nelson from the School of Music, will presumably further such cooperation even more. It will also centralize and coordinate budgets.

By this time next year we hope ground will have been broken for two new buildings in which our department has some interest. One, the Journalism and Mass Communication Center, will be right in our back yard, on the site where the Old Armory once stood. An architect has just been hired to do the design and funds to supplement the expected state appropriation are being sought from alumni and other potential donors.

The other building, which is somewhat further along in the planning, is for the School of Art and Art History. This structure will supplement the present Art Building, which the school long ago outgrew. The new building will be across Riverside Drive from the present building, adjacent to the beautiful little pond and cliff that the architect has built into the structure’s design so that they will complement the building design, and the building will complement them. This is going to be an extremely striking building.

A great deal of digging and other activity started just west of Finkbine golf course a couple of months ago, stretching from the corner of Melrose Avenue and Mormon Trek Boulevard west and north to the Hawkeye Drive and Hawkeye Court apartments for university students. Within a few years we should see new indoor and outdoor tennis courts, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, soccer fields, and an Iowa Sports Hall of Fame and Visitors Center completed in that extensive space. The three tall radio towers for WSUI/KSUI that stood in that area for many years will be moved out near Hills. Strong winds that blew through town a year or two ago helped with that process by knocking two of them down.

The new Biological Sciences addition on the corner of Clinton and Iowa Avenue, that we wrote about last fall, was completed this fall and dedicated a few weeks ago. It is quite attractive, and the lighted greenhouse on top adds interest to the Iowa City skyline at night.

The large addition to the Engineering building on Capitol Street and the even larger Medical Education and Research building on the west side of the river where the Steindler building and Student Health once stood are still under construction. Student Health has been moved into beatufiul new quarters in Westlawn. (You truly old-timers will remember when Westlawn was a dormiroty for nursing students.)

ALUMNAE TRAVEL FUND

Some of our graduate students who only recently completed their degrees have established, through the University of Iowa Foundation, a Communication Studies Alumnae Travel Fund. As they designated, it will be used to support the travel expenses of women in our graduate program who are presenting competitively-selected papers at a National Communication Association meeting for the first time. Needless to say, we are appreciative of this help.

Alums of the ‘90s

Matt Arnold (’93) reports that he has changed jobs. He is now the project manager for an e-commerce company in Minneapolis focusing on the business-to-business market segment. Before he left his former company, though, he published a few papers on group communication and knowledge management, which he had studied in the department. Two of the papers can be found in a journal titled Human Capital: Strategies & News. Two others are on the company’s web site; one at http://www.synet.com/knowledge/wp-communication.htp, the other at http://www.synet.com/knowledge/wp-knowledge-mgmt.htm.

Emperatriz Arreaza-Camero (’93), presently a Professor at the University of Zulia Mavacaibo in Venezuela, won the prize for social research from the Venezuelan National Council. She is also the recipient of a fellowship from the Canadian and Spanish Embassies to do research on cinema.

The new chair of the Mass Communication Division of the Central States Communication Association is Glenda Balas (’99) of DePauw University.

Another faculty member at DePauw, Melanie Barnes (’96), was awarded tenure this year.

Curt Biberdorf (’92) is the civilian Command Information Coordinator at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, MA. He says all of that is a long way of saying he is a public affairs officer.

The University of Pennsylvania Press just published Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence by Lisa Cuklanz (’88, ’91). Lisa was also recently appointed communication department chair at Boston College.

David Curtis (’94) says that if you want to see the script of the first feature film he is directing, you can find it on the web at http://www.eastindiefilms.com. That’s the web site for East Indie Films, LLC, which David co-founded.

Marcia Dixon (’93) has been appointed Director of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching at Indiana-Purdue University in Fort Wayne.

Heather Wessely Feeney (’94) has been promoted to the position of Coordinator of the Radio & Television News Service at the University of Wyoming.

It did not take Nikki France (’97) long to get her foot in a tremendously exciting door. A film script that she and another former Iowa student, Valerie Hiatt, wrote has been optioned. The film is set in Iowa City, Minneapolis, and points between. When it goes into production next summer, Nikki will direct and Val will produce. Meanwhile, Nikki is working at an entertainment PR firm in Los Angeles.

Heidi Harle (’96) is the Director of Member Services at the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.

John Karner (’91) is a Video Graphic Animator for Foundation Imaging in Valencia, CA.

The University of Utah’s Communique recently had a feature piece on Geoff Klinger’s (’98) appointment as Director of Forensics and Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication. His charge, it says, is to enlarge and renovate the university’s forensics program. That same issue also had an article on the appointment of Karen Dace (’90) as Vice President for Diversity, which we mentioned in our last Iowa Gazette.

Larry Mullen (’92) was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Nevada/Las Vegas.

Valerie Peterson (’99) has joined the Communication department of California Politechnic State University.

Greg Phelps (’94) wrote that he was looking at our department’s web page the other day to see who was still around that he knew. He was pleased to see that most of us, on the faculty and staff at least, are still here. Greg is now on the faculty at Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky.

Kris Pond (’94), of the famous “Duck Pond” collaboration, resigned her position at Kansas State University this fall to move to Cedar Falls, IA with her husband, the new chair of Communication Studies at the University of Northern Iowa.

Sarah Price (’92) and Chris Smith (’93) have been getting a great deal of publicity lately for their early success as film-makers. They met in a film class in the department and a few years later became a creative team, making a documentary on the work of filmmaker Mark Borch. The result, titled American Movie, won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. It has now been released by Sony Pictures.

It sounds as though Richard Sabatino (’98) has an interesting job. He is the manager of information architecture for Ameritech in Wheaton, IL. Information architecture! We old-timers don’t even know what that means.

The Los Angeles Times, in a July story about ESPN Classic network’s signature show, “Sports Century, reported that the producer of the original “Sports Century” series was Mark Shapiro (’92). Mark got his start at ESPN producing the “Talk2” show. He is now Vice President and General Manager of ESPN Classic.

Pete Simonson (’96) has joined the faculty of Communication Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Many of you undoubtedly remember seeing Mauricio Lasansky’s moving Nazi Drawings at the Museum of Art when you were in school. Now those works will be seen more widely through a video production created by Lane Wyrick (’90). The production, titled The Nazi Drawings, was awarded Best Documentary honors at this year’s Iowa Motion Picture Awards ceremony. We expect it to receive many more honors.

ALUMNI DEATHS

We are sorry to report the deaths of some good friends this past year.

Mabel McMahon Alquist, ’33, Ruidoso, NM
Richard DeGunther, ’55, Rockford, IL
Dorothy Knode Gillespie, ’43, Solana Beach, CA
Theodore Hanley, ’42, ’49, Solvang, CA
Charles Hulme, ’47, Sacramento, CA
Robert Jeffrey, ’49, ’50, ’57, Austin, TX
Murray Keatinge, ’59, Pasadena, CA
Jeanice Williams Noyes, ’39, Okoboji, IA
Ethelyn Swan Pauley, ’50, Arcata, CA
Paul Vander Myde, ’66, Alexandria, VA
Lona Paullin Wardrip, ’32, Racine, WI
Donald Winbigler, ’34, ’38, Bellevue, WA

Honor Roll of Contributors

This honor roll gratefully recognizes graduates, faculty, and friends who contributed $25 or more from January 1, 1999, through December 31, 1999, to the Department of Communication Studies through The University of Iowa Foundation, the University’s preferred channel for private support.

Contributors are listed alphabetically. A (DC) follows the names of those who qualified for membership in the College of Liberal Arts Deans Club by contributing $1,000 or more to any area of the College of Liberal Arts in 1999.
Contributions of $25 or more to the UI Foundation for any area of the University of Iowa are listed in the Foundation’s Annual Report on Giving. The 2000 Annual Report will recognize those who contribute $100 or more to any area of the University.

For more information about how you can support the Department of Communication Studies through annual gifts, life-income gifts, or other forms of charitable contributions, contact The University of Iowa Foundation, Levitt Center for University Advancement, P.O. Box 4550, Iowa

E-Mail the Department of Communication Studies: commstudies-inquiry@uiowa.edu - Page updated March 29, 2006
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