It’s nearly noon, and Speech Dean Barbara O’Keefe is checking her e-mail — again.

O’Keefe is behind schedule, but she says she needs to scan her messages one more time to make sure there’s nothing too important. “I just need about 30 seconds,” she says, smiling.

Her second-story office in Annie May Swift Hall sits in a building built in the 1890s, but O’Keefe has equipped it with all the trappings of the new millennium — a state-of-the-art Macintosh computer, a laptop, a PalmPilot and a cellular phone.

Described by colleagues as “innovative” and “forward-thinking,” Northwestern’s newest dean is undoubtedly one of the university’s most tech-savvy. And, just as she has brought her Industrial Age office into the Digital Age, bringing new technology to the School of Speech’s aging facilities is one of O’Keefe’s top priorities.

At the University of Illinois, where she taught for 18 years, O’Keefe was one of the first in her field to examine technology as a communications tool. In her previous job at the University of Michigan, O’Keefe headed up the interdisciplinary Media Union, which helped apply digital technology to classroom uses.

“She made an enormous difference on this campus,” said Paul Courant, associate provost at Michigan. “She has a very broad vision as an administrator of the role that technology and new media can play in a university. She’s tireless. She doesn’t stop.”

In an interview last week, O’Keefe said she plans to bring many of those same technological innovations to the School of Speech. Since becoming dean in July,

O’Keefe has encouraged faculty to place course material on the Internet, incorporate digital technology into lesson plans and learn to make PowerPoint presentations.

“As faculty become more familiar with their tools, they’ll develop more creative applications,” she said. “We’re a private university. The pressure on us (to embrace technology) doesn’t come from needing to manage a large number of students. Our faculty is more interested in enhancing students’ ability to learn rather than simply making contact.”

O’Keefe stepped into her role as dean amid a continuing controversy over changes to the school’s radio-TV-film curriculum.

Last fall, two professors criticized proposed curriculum changes, arguing that the new classwork would decrease the time students spent working on film production.

At the time, they said a shift toward digital video could jeopardize traditional filmmaking classes. Many students agreed, signing petitions and lobbying Speech administrators with their own changes.

But O’Keefe says the new curriculum, which is to be phased in over the next two years, will help students adapt to changing technologies without threatening production classes.

“That issue was not well understood by students and alumni,” O’Keefe said. “There seems to be a lot of concern that we’re moving away from a production focus. That’s absolutely not true, and that will never be true as long as I’m dean of the school.”

O’Keefe also plans to expand acting classes for non-majors, move Speech faculty offices out of their “dilapidated and horrible” basement space in Harris Hall and expand internship opportunities for undergraduates.

Speech performance studies Prof. Paul Edwards said he will be glad to leave his current office at the Theatre Interpretation Center, which he shares with four graduate students.

“What’s happening now in theater is that we’ve simply run out of space,” he said. “Theater has needed more faculty and graduate office space for a long time. I think it’s a really exciting and positive move.”

O’Keefe said she plans to move the performance studies department into Annie May Swift Hall and move the dean’s office to North Campus. These measures will help ease Speech’s office crunch, she said.

O’Keefe replaced David Zarefsky, who resigned in 1998 after spending more than 12 years as dean. She came to NU from Michigan’s Media Union, a position she called her “dream job.”

“It’s a place where people invent the future,” she said. “Every single day, I went to work with a spring in my step and joy in my heart. I worked with the kind of people who are attracted by the idea of working with the future.”

In fact, she said NU’s job offer — which promised her the chance to integrate top-rated academic programs with cutting-edge technology — was the only one that could have induced her to leave.

“You can buy the toys, you can buy the tools; you can’t buy the people,” she said. “That community already exists at Northwestern. That’s why I wanted to come here.”

O’Keefe assumed the dean’s position with an ambitious set of goals: to beef up faculty training, improve existing facilities and expand course offerings.

To meet these goals, she said, fund raising must be a top priority. That is why O’Keefe, with PalmPilot and laptop in hand, traveled to New York and Los Angeles twice during Fall Quarter and has visited or plans to visit Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Florida and Washington, D.C., this year.

Across the country, O’Keefe meets with alumni and tries to “get out the word” about her proposed changes. The School of Speech has raised $17.3 million for Campaign Northwestern so far, and it recently upped its target to $30 million from $25 million.

“I spend a huge amount of my time on the road,” O’Keefe said. “In getting to know our alumni and their goals, I’m very much hoping that this intensive activity will pay off in campaign contributions quite soon.”

Energetic and articulate, O’Keefe seems well-suited to the job of modernizing one of NU’s oldest schools.

While she lavishes praise on the school’s departments, O’Keefe said the school’s classrooms and facilities have become so antiquated that they cannot keep pace with the advanced technology she wants to incorporate into the curriculum.

O’Keefe said the school’s accommodations hinder her efforts to attract high-quality faculty and expand course offerings.

“We don’t have the resources we need to do the job we need to do,” she said. “We don’t have the ability to keep up with innovations. My biggest challenge is getting the resources to do the mission we’ve taken on.”

At the University of Michigan, O’Keefe developed a program that allows professors to easily place course materials on the Internet, said Stephen Director, dean of Michigan’s College of Engineering.

“She’s thought of as someone with a new vision,” he said. “She’s very energetic. Northwestern is very fortunate to have her.”

Before joining the Michigan staff, O’Keefe worked as a professor of speech communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she completed her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

David Swanson, head of Illinois’ speech communications department, said O’Keefe became nationally recognized for her work in integrating communications and technology.

O’Keefe became one of the first people in the field to convert technology from an “interesting phenomenon” to an important research subject, he said.

“She came to be a very important force on campus for innovative uses of technology in both research and teaching,” Swanson said. “She’s very gifted in creating conceptions that are able to command the interest and excitement of students and faculty. These are leadership qualities.”