School of Speech Dean Barbara O’Keefe met Thursday with about a dozen frustrated radio-TV-film graduate and doctoral students to discuss proposed changes to the department after students circulated an e-mail to faculty and a petition against the plan.
Students sent an e-mail Monday night urging faculty to vote against the proposal, which would create an interdisciplinary program with the communication studies graduate program, during their scheduled review Friday. A petition against the changes also had garnered 80 signatures by Thursday afternoon, said J.B. Capino, a sixth-year graduate R-TV-F student.
An interdisciplinary program between the R-TV-F and communication studies graduate departments would shift the focus from R-TV-F’s film track to a more technology-based approach, students said.
But Capino said O’Keefe’s efforts to hear students’ views came too late and he opted to write her a letter instead of attending the meeting. Students were informally notified of the meeting Wednesday afternoon, Capino said.
“It’s Valentine’s evening,” Capino said. “I don’t think any of us really want to spend that time with her, no matter how sincere she is. (She) didn’t even think of talking to us before.”
O’Keefe said after the meeting that she sympathized with students who felt left out of discussing the changes.
“I feel like we don’t have a real process for doing these sorts of things, this included,” she said. “I certainly empathize with them on that.”
O’Keefe also said she learned a lot about the graduate students’ concerns at the meeting, including their desire to keep the existing department tracks.
In the petition, students wrote that a more technological approach to the program would not fit with their areas of interest.
“We feel that the emphasis on ‘technology,’ which does not represent the work currently being undertaken by Ph.D. students nor the interest of the undergraduates for that matter, works against the department’s proven strength in film studies,” the petition reads in part.
The issue of joining the departments is more complicated than students understand, O’Keefe said. The hope is not to eliminate the R-TV-F program but to enhance the department, she said.
The combined program will not be only option open to students if approved, she said. A planned program in culture, media and performance needs additional curriculum and resource enhancement before it can proceed, she said.
The changes to the department will not have a negative effect on undergraduate R-TV-F students, she said, as undergraduates are mainly instructed by teaching assistants from the department’s master of fine arts program. The school is trying to strengthen the master’s program, encouraging partnerships between the department and other areas of the university in order to make the best use of available resources, O’Keefe said.
“This is all a part of the goal to be a major program for the study of communications media,” she said.
Friday’s proposal review does not represent a final decision, but rather is a working meeting on the proposal, O’Keefe said. Faculty might not even reach a vote on Friday if discussions about the changes run too long, she said.
Joshua Malitsky, a second-year graduate student, said the meeting with O’Keefe went well but declined to comment further.
“We found the meeting useful in clarifying the positions of the faculty and the dean, and we look forward to continued dialogue,” he said.
