department of communication at Michigan State University as a seed institution for communication study, The

Communication Studies, Fall 2001 by Rogers, Everett M

Seashore was an eminent mentor, whose well-equipped laboratory at Iowa provided a means for Schramm to conduct experiments on such topics as the effect of reading poetry in one rhythm rather than another. So from 1932 to 1934, Wilbur Schramm learned the basic tools of experimental science as they applied to certain human communication problems. Then a faculty position became available in the Department of English at Iowa. In 1937, Schramm inherited a graduate-level course on fiction-writing that was commonly called the "Writers' Workshop". He expanded this single course into an MA program of study, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which soon became one of the most noted fiction-writing programs in the United States. Schramm and the four or five other Workshop faculty acted as coaches to their novice-writers. The dozen or so master's students in each Workshop cohort learnedby-doing in an apprenticeship approach, guided by the youthful Professor Schramm. The organizational culture of the Workshop was supportive but intensive, setting the learning/teaching style for the several doctoral programs in communication that Schramm later founded.

During his four years (1937-1941) as director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Wilbur Schramm maintained close ties with psychology, through his friendships with Carl Seashore and George Stoddard, a University of Iowa psychologist who directed the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, an institute funded by the Iowa Legislature and by the Rockefeller Foundation. Kurt Lewin, the famous University of Berlin psychologist, joined Stoddard's unit as a refugee from Hitler in 1935, staying at Iowa for nine years. Schramm became acquainted with Lewin and participated in his weekly Quasselstrippen ("rambling discussions") with his graduate students, held just off campus in the Roundwindow Restaurant. Schramm credits Lewin with influencing his vision of communication study (Schramm, 1997). At Iowa, Schramm developed quantitative social science skills, transitioning from his humanities background, and formed an approach to directing graduate training in communication.

The Role of World War II

By mid-January, 1942, a month after the United States entered World War II, the patriotic Schramm was at work in Washington, DC as Chief of the Education Division of the Office of Facts and Figures (OFF), the newly-created American propaganda agency. Schramm participated regularly in meetings with his OFF colleagues and their eminent consultants (Carl Hovland, Paul Lazarsfeld, George Gallup, and others) to plan and evaluate a series of nationwide communication campaigns designed to encourage the American people to buy War Bonds, to stop driving their automobiles for pleasure in order to save scarce tires and fuel, to raise Victory Gardens, and to participate in scrap metal and rubber drives. Wilbur Schramm's 15 months in Washington were eye-opening for him in a scholarly sense. He was touched by great minds that were united in a common cause of unquestioned urgency. He participated in a practical demonstration of the power of persuasive communication, which he helped evaluate through research.