REBOOTING THE COLLEGE FOR THE DIGITAL AGE A Q&A with Dean Lori Bergen, Ph.D.
Standing outside Johnston Hall, you can’t help but be struck by the contradiction. One of Marquette’s oldest buildings looks exactly the way it did for decades when it served as training ground to generations of aspiring journalists, PR pros and future Mad Men (and Women). From 12th and Wisconsin, everything looks like business as usual. Inside, however, another story unfolds. Johnston Hall is undergoing an extreme school makeover, the Marquette edition. Everything from the curriculum to the classrooms is rebooting to meet the needs of the next generation of communication majors. Major changes to the curriculum are under way, and, at the beginning of summer 2014, the entire building began being retrofitted to ensure Marquette’s communication students have what they need to meet the challenges that are streaming through their industry. We sat down with Dean Lori Bergen, Ph.D., to talk about these changes for the Diederich College and get an update about the vision for the college’s future. Q. “Rebooting” is an interesting word to describe what’s happening for the College of Communication. What’s that about? Bergen: I like the metaphor of “rebooting” the college for the digital age. It’s a digital 2.0 term for restarting the operating system of a computer. Boot references the idiom “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” — overcoming a challenge through your own force of will.
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Q&A
In 2013, we completed a strategic plan process at Marquette that compels us to reach beyond traditional academic boundaries to address challenges, to become agents for change in a complex world, to reimagine who we are and what we do, to innovate and solve problems, and to set the world on fire. These are powerful words from the plan — aspiring to be recognized among the most innovative and accomplished Catholic and Jesuit universities in the world. With that vision from the strategic plan, we’re challenged to put everything on the table, to “reboot.” And that’s essentially what we’re doing: making change possible from the inside out. Q. What are some of the ways that technology has influenced curricular changes and other innovations in the college? What’s the rationale for changes you’ve been making? Bergen: First and foremost, we know that everything today is driven by digital capability. When I say “digital,” I mean it as shorthand for a cultural shift — how we think and live and work and teach, redefined for a knowledge-based society. As a college, that means we’ve had to shift away from preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist anymore and to integrate skills for a digital future in new ways. As we’ve made important additions in our course offerings, we’ve kept the foundations that transcend time. We’ve started focusing more on experience and doing — collaborations among students and students working with faculty. Students come to us with a passion for communication, and they expect to find jobs when they graduate. They need global awareness, technical skill, a certain self-confidence and as much real-world experience as they can get. They have to be problem-solvers. We’ve updated our curriculum, and our faculty are committed to ensuring students take courses that reflect continuing developments in the communication industries and the world.
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