Dean's Column

No spring slowdown here

  Normally mid-May is a slow time around Avery Hall. Students suddenly seem to have disappeared, and faculty are either finishing up on their grading, or they are collapsed in a state of exhaustion.

  This year Avery hall has not been a quiet place.

  On the day before graduation Dr. Larry Walklin and the two secretaries in the broadcasting department packed up and moved across the hall to the Neale Copple Reading Room for the summer while their former office is renovated into a classroom for the college.

  Meanwhile, the classroom immediately to the west of the college offices is undergoing renovation. That room will become the entrance to the college offices. All the college’s support staff will be in that room, and Dr. Larry Walklin and Dr. Michael Stricklin will be in the former college office along with Associate Dean Linda Shipley, Charlyne Berens and me.

  So there has been a lot of noise and a lot of dust, and a lot of workers have been coming and going.

  Amidst all this apparent chaos, the college has hosted the Dow Jones Editing Interns. The students are selected competitively from journalism programs across the nation and are provided with two weeks of intensive training in copy editing before interning at various daily newspapers for the summer. Neale Copple and Jack Botts had run a two-week workshop for the program when it began, but they decided not to continue with it during the 1970s.

  Dick Thien, professional lecturer in news-editorial, thought we ought to have a center here at UNL. He began conversing with Richard Holden, director for the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, last year after six Nebraska students were named interns in the program. Thien learned that no other school had ever placed six interns. He told Holden how he and Daryl Frazell prepare students for careers in editing, and Holden was impressed.

  After more conversations between Holden and the college, Frazell took responsibility for the project, and we were selected as an editing center. Thus, for two weeks this May we had 12 extremely bright editing interns in our building. They were so full of life and so energetic that several faculty told me what a great experience it was for the department faculty to be challenged by such students.

  This would have been enough activity for May, but in the middle of the two-week Dow Jones workshop Charlyne Berens was directing the first Reader’s Digest Magazine Article Writers’ Workshop. More than 130 freelance writers attended the all-day session, learning about the kinds of freelance articles various magazines publish.

  Among the editors who spoke at the workshop were Peter Blocksom, managing editor of Writer’s Digest; Rebecca Greer, articles editor at Woman’s Day; Carolyn Kitch, non-fiction articles editor at Good Housekeeping; Carol Lutyk, articles editor at National Geographic Traveler; Maggie Nichols, managing editor of Field and Stream; Caroll Shreeve, vice president of Meridian International; and Eric Wing, senior editor of Reader’s Digest.

  Clearly, mid-May no longer is a time when our staff can catch its breath. We want you to know we’re dedicated to maintaining the great traditions of the college, enhancing some of them and adding a few new ones.

  It’s all part of having a tradition of excellence with a vision for tomorrow.