CENTENNIAL
Writing 100 years of history: Journalism education at Carolina When Tom Bowers began researching the history of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, he did not know that the written history of the school would grow from the existing two paragraphs in the school’s catalog to more than 180 single-spaced pages. Bowers – who joined the faculty in 1971, served as associate dean for 20 years, senior associate dean for six years, and interim dean for a year before his retirement in 2006 – and Dean Jean Folkerts will publish the history as a book in connection with the school’s 2009 celebration of the centennial of the first journalism course taught at UNC. “I didn’t know I would find so many sources,” Bowers said. “I started by spending many hours in the North Carolina Collection at Wilson Library looking at university catalogs and microfilmed copies of the Tar Heel newspaper from 1893 to 1925.” He said he hit paydirt in the Southern Historical Collection, where he mined the personal papers of two deans (“Skipper” Coffin, dean from 1926 to 1953, and Norval Neil Luxon, from 1953 to 1964) and of important alumni like Holt McPherson. All were prolific letter writers who saved their personal and professional correspondence. Bowers
Norval Neil Luxon
supplemented that material with archival files from the University’s presidents, chancellors, provosts, development office, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Radio, Television and Motion Pictures. Bowers also examined material in Carroll Hall, including records of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication Foundation, past issues of school publications, and office files. In another part of the centennial project, Bowers has conducted oral history interviews with former students and faculty members. The interviews will be kept in the school’s Park Library, and Bowers is using some of the interview material in the history. In one of those interviews, professor Donald Shaw escorted Bowers on a tour of the east side of the second floor of Bynum Hall, which was the home of the school from 1935 until 1960, when it moved to Howell Hall. (Shaw was a student at the time.) “It was meaningful for me to stand in an actual location of the school,” Bowers said, “because it connected me to the past.” His research revealed that before the Department of Journalism moved to Bynum, it was on the south side of the second (main) floor of Alumni Building. Prior to Alumni, from 1924 to 1926, the department occupied rooms on the second floor of New West, above the Tar Heel offices and below a room where the UNC wrestling team practiced.
Smith Building, now old Playmakers, was home to journalism courses in 1916.
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CAROLINA COMMUNICATOR
Edward Kidder Graham taught the first journalism course at Carolina in 1909. The earliest known location of journalism » continued on page 48