BYU’s Department of Communications has achieved school status, a change that takes place immediately and will benefit both faculty and students.
The school includes journalism, public relations and advertising programs. Outlets for student work in those programs include The Universe, 11News, The Ad Lab and Bradley Public Relations.
Department chairman and now school director Ed Adams said the change has been decades in the making and earned, in earnest, over the past six or seven years.
The first proposal by a department chair to request a designation change from a department to a school was drafted in 1979 by Dallas Burnett to College of Fine Arts and Communications Dean Lael Woodbury. There have been eight subsequent proposals, the most recent submitted by Adams to Stephen Jones, dean of BYU’s College of Fine Arts and Communications, on Oct. 27. The proposal before that was submitted by Adams almost 11 years ago.