April 22, 2004

The oldest communication school, the newest School of Communication

The School of Communication celebrates its 125th birthday with events May 1, 2

Students of elocution pose on the steps of the new Annie May Swift Hall, built in 1895 to house the School of Oratory.

For the last half year, the School of Communication has been celebrating its 125th birthday with special events and programs in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and places in between. Now it’s time for the final commemorative weekend of celebration and reflection on the Evanston campus.

On Saturday and Sunday, May 1 and 2, the School of Communication invites students, alumni and the general public to celebrate the school’s illustrious history as a leader in the performing and communication arts.

Among the birthday events scheduled for the weekend is the 125th Forum at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 1, in the auditorium of Annie May Swift Hall. This free event will feature school faculty and leaders in their respective fields discussing the future of the communication studies, arts and sciences.

Students use the “bone prop” to improve articulation.

A free 125th Revue at 6:30 p.m. in McCormick Auditorium in Norris University will give students from the school known for producing stars of and craftsmen of the stage, television and film an opportunity to show off their multiple talents.

The revue will feature performances by music-theatre students, impromptu speeches by the school’s top-ranked Speech Team, a screening of the 2002 Student Emmy Award-winning Niteskool video, and improvisational comedy sketches about the history of the school. Cindy Gold, assistant professor of theatre, will serve as emcee for the evening.

Barbara O’Keefe, dean of the School of Communication, often refers to the institution she heads as the oldest communication school and the newest School of Communication. After two decades of discussions by faculty about the school’s former name, Northwestern’s School of Speech from 1921 to 2001, with modest fanfare, became the School of Communication in 2002.

It was not the first name change experienced by the school. Prior to its incarnation as the School of Speech, it began as the School of Oratory in 1878. Each name change has signaled the institution’s increasing breadth and depth of academic study as its faculty broadened and redefined their disciplines.

1965 national debate winners show off their hardware.

The School of Oratory was largely the result of the efforts and tenacity of Robert McLean Cumnock, the son of a Scottish immigrant and New England laborer who studied speech and debate at Wesleyan University. A mesmerizing orator and a star of the Chautauqua Circuit, Cumnock left New England in 1868 to teach at Garrett Theological Seminary in the relative wilds of Evanston.

At Garrett it was hoped that he would teach young ministers how to preach with flair, a service for which he was paid $3 each week. Short on funds, Cumnock supplemented his income by offering private lessons and teaching elocution classes at neighboring Northwestern University.

As word spread of his oratory abilities and capacity for teaching even the most mediocre speaker how to better perform, Cumnock’s classes were among the University’s most popular. He captivated his students with readings from Shakespeare and the Bible, and by 1878 was the sole instructor of the University’s two-year program in elocution.

That curriculum officially became Northwestern University’s School of Oratory, with Cumnock as the school’s first dean. Neither Cumnock nor Northwestern’s trustees were deterred by the fact that elocution was fading from respectability in academe. They hired additional faculty members — the overwhelming majority of them women — to teach elocution to their mostly female students.

A student works in the WNUR studio in the 1970s.

And, in a further vote of confidence, the trustees gave Cumnock permission to raise funds for a separate edifice dedicated to the study of elocution. The result was Annie May Swift Hall, which was dedicated in 1895 as home to the School of Oratory.

While Cumnock is credited with founding what today has become the School of Communication, the school’s enormous growth results from the five deans who succeeded him. Ralph B. Dennis, the school’s second dean, wisely broadened the school’s scope from the almost exclusive study of elocution to the study of children’s theatre, radio, interpretation, and public speaking.

In 1921, the school was renamed the School of Speech to better describe its multi-faceted activities. A public speech clinic was created in 1928, marking the modest beginning of what would become a prestigious and important part of the school — the department of communication sciences and disorders, with specialties in audiology, speech pathology and learning disabilities.

Today that department always ranks among the top three in the country and has educated thousands of clinicians, professors and researchers in the field and, through its clinics, directly benefited the community.

The school’s emphasis on interpretation sowed the seeds for what became the department of performance studies, which today specializes in turning non-dramatic works of non-fiction, novels and poetry into drama and boasts award-winning faculty and alumni. The 2002 Tony Award-winning play “Metamorphoses,” based on the ancient myths and poetry of Ovid, for example, was first produced and staged by students at Northwestern before it went on to theatres in Chicago and Broadway.

Alumni Charlton Heston and Ann-Margret share stories on Dinah Shore’s “Salute to Northwestern” show.

The school’s pioneering work in drama, vigorously pursued under Dennis and later deans, helped to create the highly successful theatre department that exists today and that prompted Los Angeles-based Buzz magazine a few years ago to call a Northwestern degree “Holly-wood’s power diploma.”

The theatre department has influenced theatre throughout the country, as its alumni have created outstanding theatre companies in Chicago and elsewhere. The school is legendary for its role in producing award-winning actors, directors, costume designers, screenwriters, producers, playwrights and set designers working on Broadway and in Hollywood.

Early courses in public speaking led to the development of the department of communication studies, the school’s broadest department. The department today offers courses in all aspects of communication including theories of persuasion, computer-mediated communication, news media and American society, the rhetoric of social movements, family communication behavior, the rhetoric of the American presidency, and bargaining and negotiation. The department is closely associated with the Northwestern Debate Society, which has won more National Debate Tournament championships than any college team in the country.

Radio/TV/film students work on a project.

What began as the study of radio production extended in 1949 to the study of television and, in 1956, the study of film production and of film as an art form. Today’s radio/television/ film faculty and students work and learn to write for all kinds of creative media. Students not only have access to state-of-the-art facilities, they apply their learning and experience in internships and student-run activities such as Niteskool, the school’s 20-year-old music, film and concert production company, and Studio 22, its film production company.

Dean Cumnock undoubtedly would have had a hard time envisioning how broad and successful his School of Oratory was to become. Dean O’Keefe emphasizes that the School of Communication succeeds because it treats its students as partners.

“Our students are brought in as colleagues and given the opportunity to pursue their interests in a very professional setting. It’s all real work. And that’s what makes us so successful.” she says.