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The University of Maine Department of Communication and Journalism is cutting back. The department announced at the end of August it will discontinue the advertising sequence of the journalism major, and has said it plans to axe the communication and public relations minors.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will likely stop offering the communication and public relations minors because of a lack of demand and a request from the journalism department, according to college dean Jeffrey Hecker. There are currently 34 students with a declared public relations minor and nine with a minor in communications.
“We’re suspending new declarations of new minors,” said Paul Grosswiler, chair of the communication and journalism department. Grosswiler said the department can’t offer enough sections in its public relations course because of a shortage of professors.
“What we want to do is provide the students the opportunity to finish out if they’ve made significant progress toward the minor — to be able to offer the courses to them one or two at a time, so that they get to finish out as we phase them [the minors] out,” Hecker said.
The advertising sequence of the journalism major is in similar trouble.
Because of an external review in October 2008, the department decided the separation of journalism concentrations among news-editorial, broadcast and advertising was outdated and decided to merge the three to reflect modern news. At about the same time the department was considering the review’s recommendations during spring 2009, journalism professor Changmin Yan left UMaine for another job, according to Hecker, which hurt the department’s ability to offer the advertising sequence.
“We have traditionally had one person teaching in the advertising area, and that was the person that resigned,” Grosswiler said. “So as part of the budget-cutting criteria that the college and the university were implementing, one way to cut the budget for this year was to not fill any open positions.”
Grosswiler said the department requested a hiring search to fill the position, but UMaine administration and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences turned it down.
The department informed journalism students Aug. 28, 2009 of the planned elimination throughout the next two years. The advertising sequence currently has about 50 declared students.
“[I am] kind of frustrated by it,” said Nicholas Brinzow, a third-year advertising student. “I actually had to change two of my classes because I realize that now I have a major time crunch, because they’re actually doing away with some classes that weren’t going to be available next semester.”
Brinzow said he heard about the planned elimination “about two classes ago,” after a 3:30 p.m. course Sept. 8 and wasn’t told by his advisor.
“I think that it’s irritating how little communication there was until now, because I had to hear it through the grapevine to find out what classes I should take this semester,” said Ashlyn St. Ours, a second-year advertising student.
“I know a couple of people that didn’t take CMJ 250, but they’ve taken other advertising classes because they had permission and were hoping to phase into advertising, but one of the requirements is that you’ve taken CMJ 250, because that’s like the intro to advertising. I’m just hoping that the advisor doesn’t in any way say, ‘Sorry, it’s not going to work,’” Brinzow said.
The department will no longer offer CMJ 250: Introduction to Advertising, according to the announcement. Hecker said the college and department considered the campus-wide impact and the needs of the students in the advertising sequence before reaching this decision. The department is offering advertising courses CMJ 355, 356 and 380 this semester, but after spring 2011, the only advertising course given will be CMJ 380.
“Since we were not able to teach the advertising sequence … we decided to phase out advertising,” Grosswiler said. “The dropping off of the ad sequence isn’t something that we planned to do.”
Two other journalism professors left or retired in addition to Yan. Hecker said this was a significant factor in the decision.
“One of the things the program reviewers said was that the journalism major, the way it was arranged with three sequences, was unnecessarily complicated and really wasn’t ideal training. They encouraged faculty to rethink this whole sequence and look more at an integrated journalism major, where students would have some coursework related to advertising and broadcast journalism and news-editorial, and they’ve done that,” Hecker said.
Hecker said the department would consider bringing the advertising sequence back, but probably not in its current form or any time soon.
“If they were to come back and say, ‘We want to recreate this sequence,’ I would have questions with them about why. What’s the rational, and how does it fit with contemporary training, education? How does it fit with the resources that we have to look at it?” Hecker said.
Grosswiler said he was unsure when the department will make an official announcement on the two minors. He said he does not believe the lack of an advertising sequence will diminish the journalism major in any way.
CORRECTION:A previous version of this article stated that the only advertising courses after spring 2010 were CMJ 459 and 380. CMJ 380 will continue to be offered after Spring 2011 as a mass communication course. CMJ 459 will be offered in spring 2010 and 2011.
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