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

Communication Studies, Fall 2001 by Rogers, Everett M

MSU was a university on the make, and President Hannah was open to innovation in higher education.6 For example, Hannah built Michigan State into one of the most international of U.S. research universities, reaching out to the developing nations of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Hannah presumably was dissatisfied with the existing communication-related units (a school of journalism and a department of speech and theatre). He recruited Gordon Sabine from the University of Oregon to become Head of the School of Journalism, and one year later, in 1955, appointed him Dean of the newly-created College of Communication Arts. These personnel and organizational changes set in motion the forces, both accidental and intentional, leading to the founding of the doctoral program in communication (without adjectives like "mass" or "speech") in 1957 in the newly-established Department of General Communication Arts.

DAVID BERLO: IMPLEMENTING THE VISION

David K. Berlo was the individual most responsible for implementing Schramm's vision in the Michigan State University Department of Communication. Berlo, one of the first individuals to receive a Ph.D. degree in the new field of communication, founded the Department of Communication at Michigan State University and continued as Chair for the Department's first 14 years (1957-1971).

Berlo completed his doctoral courses at Illinois in two years while on full-time active duty at nearby Chanute Air Force Base. When he arrived at Michigan State University as Chair of the new Department of General Communication Arts, he was a 29-year old assistant professor. Most other department chairs at MSU were full professors and at least 20 years his senior. The new department was housed on the top floor of the University's Student Union, hardly a location to convey an image of permanence. Berlo perceived that his department was at risk, and used this perception to convince his faculty to pull together against a hostile environment. In order to create the appearance of maturity, Berlo deliberately gained body weight, ballooning to over 270 pounds.7 He dressed in well-tailored dark suits, and quickly learned to act like the chair of a well-established department.

Berlo, unlike Schramm (who envisioned a graduate-level discipline of communication, built on existing undergraduate programs in journalism and speech), extended this conception to the undergraduate level, with his 1960 classic introductory textbook, The Process of Communication. An undergraduate major in communication was established at Michigan State University, one of the first in the United States. This undergraduate emphasis was very important; the growth of the field of communication in later decades has been much more dramatic at the undergraduate level than at the graduate level. Further, as the undergraduate teaching role of the MSU Department grew over the years, the opportunities for doctoral students to gain teaching experience meant that they had an edge in the job market.8 Berlo clearly saw that training large numbers of doctoral students was the route to implementing a social science conception of communication nationally and internationally. The distinctively-trained MSU doctorates were the seeds from which the field of communication could grow.