About 10 radio-TV-film graduate students submitted an e-mail letter to School of Speech faculty members Monday asking them to vote against a proposed interdisciplinary program that would join the R-TV-F and communication studies departments.
The program, “Media and Technology,” also would involve coursework in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Medill School of Journalism. Faculty are scheduled to vote on the program Friday.
Students met Monday at Annie May Swift Hall to draft their letter. The proposed program would take resources away from the film sector of R-TV-F and place emphasis on more technology-based disciplines, said doctoral student J.B. Capino.
“When you really look at the bottom line, it’s that the radio-TV-film program is being dissolved,” said Capino, who has studied in the department for six years. “We want to preserve the courses that pertain to film studies. We want that to be at the center of the concern.”
Senior Associate Dean James Webster said that while the proposed program would restructure the graduate curriculum, it would not eliminate existing areas of coursework.
“What we’re proposing to do is to combine the Ph.D. in radio-TV-film with doctoral work in communications studies that is specialized in mass communications or media studies – so taking two small doctoral programs and making one larger program,” Webster said.
So students could continue their present courses of study, Webster said that adopting the proposed program would not immediately rename the graduate R-TV-F program.
“At some point when this is approved, as I hope it will be, we’ll admit students into a program of media and technology,” Webster said. “Nobody is going to be forced into a different program than they came to.”
Students said their primary concern is that the proposed program would weaken the department and drive prospective graduate students to other schools, Capino said. This, in turn, would weaken the quality of teaching assistants for undergraduate courses, he added.
“The overwhelming concern is that most of the people who are interested in film studies are going to go to the University of Chicago, where they have a program that is gaining force,” Capino said. “A few years ago, that program didn’t even exist, and Northwestern was the No. 1 program.”
Despite the students’ concerns, Webster said the R-TV-F program has not strictly focused on film during his 15 years at NU.
“It’s not been a film school or a film department, and it hasn’t been a film Ph.D.,” he said. “We’ve always looked at a range of media.”
Students also complained they were not given enough time to react to the proposal, Capino said. Graduate students were notified by e-mail of the proposal on Jan. 29, less than three weeks before the faculty vote.
Faculty have been planning the integrated program since the summer of 2000, said Dean Barbara O’Keefe, adding she had not heard of any opposition to the proposal. Webster said he did not know to what extent administrators had consulted students about the program.
O’Keefe said she will update technology in the School of Speech, but has no plans to eliminate the R-TV-F department or its film disciplines.
“Radio-TV-film is one of those areas where new technologies are challenging the old media,” O’Keefe said. “Screen arts are very vibrant right now and are more important every day in our culture. That component of the program will become every more important because of the digital revolution.”
