Professor Charles Stewart, left, talks with graduate student Claudia Janssen at a recent undergraduate recruiting fair

By Daniel Smith
Creative Writing, junior

Purdue's Department of Communication has come a long way these past 60 years.

The department this fall is celebrating its 60th anniversary as a department at Purdue. Additionally, it was 100 years ago this fall that Purdue first offered a communication course.

Communication has "changed immensely in virtually every way," said Professor Charles Stewart.

What is today known as the Department of Communication was once the public speaking program in the Department of English. In 1947, Dean A. A. Potter asked Professor Allen Monroe to head a new splinter department, the Speech Department.

Professor Hank Scheele and his wife, Jess, enjoy the reception for alumni and faculty from the 1970s held to celebrate the department's anniversary.

Professor Hank Scheele was a graduate student at Purdue while Monroe was heading the Speech Department, and later worked under him.

"He was the greatest speech teacher I ever had," said Scheele. Monroe is most well-known for Monroe's Motivated Sequence, the basis for his textbook "Principles and Types of Speech" and one of the most common organizational patterns used in speech and advertising today.

The motivated sequence, which Monroe created in the late 1930s, helped to bring Purdue a national reputation. Professor Stewart said he once used "Principles and Types of Speech" to teach public speaking at a military base when he was on call with the reserves.

In those days speech included some programs that have since either left for other departments or become departments of their own, namely theater and speech and hearing.

Speech at Purdue was quite traditional early on, but by the late sixties the field had changed dramatically. Public relations and advertising had exploded, leading to an increase from 100 to 200 majors in the department to as many as 1,500.

When the journalism program moved from the English Department to the Speech Department in 1969, speech became communication, the name that the department has held ever since.

George Stevens, a professor emeritus in the department, likes to tell the story of how he came to work in communication even though they never hired him. He was hired by the English Department, only to discover journalism's move when he arrived to look for housing.

Communication also managed to get some office furniture from English at the same time, so Stevens often tells people that he was traded for a desk and two chairs.

The focus of students has changed as well. Most communication majors used to plan to be high school speech teachers, and a fair number were or wanted to be ministers, said Stewart. Those career paths are less common now, thanks in part to the Communication Department's increasingly wide array of majors and academic programs. Today the department boasts the second largest number of undergraduate majors in the College of Liberal Arts.

Today the Purdue University Department of Communication is one of the largest and best communication departments in the country. Its programs in Organizational Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Public Relations and Rhetorical Advocacy and Health Communication rank in the Top 15 in the country, said Stewart.

The department does a high level of research and has a very active faculty. Students come from all over the world to participate in communication at Purdue.

From humble beginnings to worldwide recognition, the Communication Department has come a long way. And if the students and faculty continue to live up to its reputation for greatness, the department will be one of the best in the world for another 60 years.