Composing a New College

You may not think that media, design and art history go together, but a faculty steering committee is proposing a new CU-Boulder interdisciplinary college.

If adopted it would include journalism and mass communication, social media, film studies, theater and dance, art and art history, architecture and possibly music.

The committee report says the new college will “advance creative practice and enhance public discourse at the intersections of arts, scholarship and civic life.”

“It is a big step, but successive CU administrations have been contemplating something like this for decades, recognizing that the media of communication and expression, both new and old, are being used to fundamentally change countless aspects of how we live, and we should be making efforts to have CU become a leader in this field,” says professor Andrew Calabrese of journalism and mass communication and steering committee chair.

Key to the committee report was the closure of the journalism school on June 30, 2011, following a 5-4 vote of the regents. It is the first school in university history to be shut down. The regent vote ended a tense nine-month “discontinuance” process during which two university committees issued reports related to the future of journalism education.

In proposing that journalism be incorporated into a new college, the committee’s report would enable CU to “reimagine journalism,” Provost Russ Moore says. The journalism faculty has already made significant strides with the establishment of Journalism Plus, he says.

The Plus program, implemented with incoming spring 2012 students, features immersion in an additional 30-33 hours of coursework in the liberal arts alongside the journalism curricula.

A panel of experts will review the proposal and meet with constituent groups. No date has been set for the provost’s report to the chancellor.

See the committee report at https://academicaffairs.colorado.edu/academicreview/.

Photo courtesy Casey A. Cass