Derek C. van Bronkhorst
November 22, 2010
Mr. Jeffrey Hale
Director of Liberal Studies
211 Gilkey Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-6202
Dear Jeff,
I was delighted to read your draft of the “Digital Communications Degree Proposal” for New Media Communications.
As you know, I have supported the New Media Communications program since its inception. While I have been frustrated at how long it has taken to get the program off the ground and for university officials to understand the importance of this program, I have to say that you have done an excellent job bringing the department forward, gaining the understanding among university officials needed for it to grow and obtaining funding commitments required to make the programs sustainable.
I believe that the NMC program is vital for the university, the State of Oregon, and, most importantly, for students coming out of OSU to be ready to face the challenges of the business world.
OSU as a university needs to stay current while building for the future. New programs like NMC are the future of the university and need to be incubated and grown to allow students to face the current and future needs they will face upon graduation. I graduated from OSU in 1985. I remember taking a computer course where I had to go to the computer center and punch cards and feed them through the computer to get a print out of my results. Little did anyone know that only a few short years later there would be a computer on every desk in every office around the world. The university did a poor job preparing me for that because nobody understood how the computer would take off. That is not the case today. We know very well that every student coming out of college will be called upon to embrace and utilize technologies in their everyday work and personal lives. NMC will help bring OSU into the digital world in a meaningful way. This program is critical to the ongoing relevance of OSU.
The people in the State of Oregon will benefit greatly from the NMC program, but more than that, if the NMC program doesn’t exist, the Oregon economy will suffer. Preparing students ready for the workforce is one of the core challenges of the University. Communicating – figuring out how best to tell a story – is a challenging discipline in and of itself. Now we are required not only to be able to tell the story, but we need to tell the story through any of a number of mediums (traditional print publications, web sites, social networking sites, blogs, tweets . . . and many more formats that are yet to come out of the high tech world). This is not a passing fad, this is the way of the digital world. The State of Oregon needs workers who are capable of embracing these new technologies and helping the workforce of Oregon navigate this new world. Ignoring this need will have severe financial consequences on the state and its residents.
The most fundamental job of any institution of higher education is to prepare its students to be productive members of society and to ensure that they have the skill sets that they need to survive and thrive. There is no question that students emerging from OSU now and for the foreseeable future will need to understand and embrace new technologies for communicating. They will need to understand how to apply new technologies in their work and personal lives. They will need to have the aptitude to accept and embrace new technologies long after they have left the safe confines of the OSU campus. The old adage “Give me a fish and I eat today-- teach me to fish and I eat forever,” has never been more meaningful. Students coming out of OSU need tools that will help them digest new technology now and well into the future. The NMC program will go a long way towards preparing them for the real world of tomorrow.
In reviewing the NMC proposal, I am concerned that the university devotes adequate funds to ensure success of this vital program. I recognize that budgets are constantly being cut and that the university is under significant financial pressure. That said, the rapid growth in terms of number of students in the program combined with the very small core staff of professors means that class sizes are already larger than they were intended. This is impressive when you consider that there has been no real proactive marketing of the NMC program. It is time to shore up the staffing needs and figure out how to increase the investment in the program (in terms of students as well as faculty, staff and facilities) as it continues to attract more students. In order to be competitive with other universities who are offing similar programs, OSU needs to find a way to allocate more funds to this emerging program. Clearly this should be viewed as an investment in OSU’s future, not as an added cost during a time of budget cuts.
In conclusion, I am very enthusiastic about the New Media Communications program and its prospects for the future. Having graduated from OSU with a degree in Speech Communications and as someone who has spent the last 25 years in Communications and Marketing (at ROLM, Siemens, IBM, Levi Strauss & CO., Verity, and Chordiant Software), I am excited to know that there will be students coming out of OSU with the skills that I need on my staff today and the aptitude to handle the technologies of tomorrow.
Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions regarding my thoughts about the program.
Best regards,
Derek C. van Bronkhorst
OSU Class of 1985
1378 Robnick Court, Campbell, CA 95008
650-315-7856