Luis Lopez (left) paints the new office area of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at Andersen Hall.     When the computers are installed, this wide-open space (below) will become a multi-media newsroom for broadcasting, news-editorial and advertising students. The ceiling of the second-floor room is open to the third floor and skylights above.
The new Journalism school is at 200 Centennial Mall, in the former Security Mutual Life Nebraska building.

College of Journalism and Mass Communications Relocates to Andersen Hall

J School Moves into High-Tech Home

By Kelly Bartling, University Communications

Despite its retro pink and green tile and blond woodwork, Andersen Hall is anything but 1950s.

The new home to the College of Journalism and Mass Communications may have a decidedly '50s feel to some of its decorative features, but its floor plan and space usage are solidly 21st century.

The former Security Mutual Life Nebraska building has been transformed from a 1958 office building to its new life as a college building and mass media instructional center. And when students arrive for their first classes on Aug. 27, they'll find a fascinating mix of era architecture and cutting-edge technology.

"A lot of the original tile and paneling were kept in order to keep that 1950s look as much as possible," said Linda Shipley, associate dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. "The architects wanted to maintain the integrity of the 1950s architecture because it is now considered a 'classic' style."

But little of the building's new college layout would be a throwback to 1958, Shipley pointed out on a recent tour. With distance education classrooms and control rooms, multimedia newsrooms, broadcast news and production studios, large-screen televisions, satellite dishes, standup computers, control rooms, electronic darkrooms, audio/video labs, wireless and fiber-optic networking, Andersen Hall is a high-powered and multifunctional media learning center.

At 200 Centennial Mall, the project to revamp the 46,000-square-foot former insurance office building into a cutting edge mass communications educational facility has been in the works since 2000. The university acquired the property in 1996, and the building is named for NU Foundation Capital Campaign co-chairs Harold and Marian Andersen of Omaha. Harold Andersen is the former publisher of the Omaha World-Herald and Marian is a graduate of the journalism program and a prominent civic leader.

The finishing touches on classrooms, offices and workspace, infrastructure and other details are taking place during the final weeks before fall semester. Faculty are scheduled to move in by Aug. 20, Shipley said.

The first floor holds the department offices, a student commons/study area, the graduate center and the main classrooms, as well as a writing lab, distance learning control room and a focus group room. Second floor space is for the KRNU radio station, radio and television news studios and audio production labs, faculty offices and news conference rooms. The largest area of the second floor is dedicated to a multimedia newsroom with computer pods that could accommodate any type of newsroom product: Web, video, audio or print. The second-floor newsroom/lab is open to the advertising student commons on third floor and lets in plenty of natural light. The third floor has a client presentation room, graphics labs, production studio and set storage.

On the basement level, which won't be ready for use until second semester, is the large lecture hall, which holds 120 seats, regular darkroom facilities and student lounge.

Shipley said the lecture hall and many of the other areas are capable of providing distance education. This is a priority for the college, which has offered graduate courses this way since 1995. Now, more areas of the building will be wired for satellite, fiber-optic or Internet linkups.

While doubling its space, the college was able to use the changeover to Andersen Hall to better reflect its curriculum and offerings. The study and practice of journalism and mass communication has been evolving rapidly with technological advancements, and Shipley said that is obvious in the design of the new quarters. Many areas in Andersen Hall are multi-media-ready and show real-life crossover between traditional advertising, broadcasting and news-editorial.

"There is a transformation taking place in media right now," Shipley said, "so the timing for this new building is especially advantageous for our program. Technology is changing so rapidly that if we would have moved into the new building even five years ago, the setup would have been different."

With the growing influence of the Web and other "real-time" media technologies, the journalism college's tradition of giving graduates a broad-based education is even more important, Shipley said, and the building will help the college provide that.

"We are told by our alumni and media professionals that our students need to be able to adapt. They still must specialize in broadcast, advertising or news-editorial, but they need to know about the other disciplines," she said. "The tools, software and hardware they are using now may someday be obsolete on their jobs so we need to prepare them in the basics."

The newsroom will be one of the best features of the building, Shipley said, and the envy of journalism colleges everywhere.

"We're one of the first to actually accomplish that," she said. "Most are still making the transition of having their curriculum reflect multi-media."

"Associate Dean Shipley and I have been on many campuses, and there are no journalism and mass communications buildings that are as well-designed as this facility," said Will Norton Jr., dean of the college. "What is even more important is that more than two-thirds of the funds for purchase and renovation came from private donations.

"We are taking our equipment and furniture with us," Norton said. "So now our major task is to raise private funds for program enhancement. We are confident our alumni and professional friends will see what a great facility we have and make generous contributions to complete the furnishing and equipping of our program."

Pottery found on Gorée Island shows Professor Mark Hinchman about the lifestyle of people on the island.

Design Professor Studies Gorée Island Ruins

By Scott Franzen, University Communications Intern

Using brushes, archaeologists delicately whisk dust from fragments of French and African pottery buried beneath the sand on Gorée Island.

At barely 88 acres, the tiny desert island is nestled within the harbor of Dakar, Senegal, along the western coast of Africa. The pottery fragments it holds capture the interest of Mark Hinchman, an architecture historian and assistant professor of interior design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Clues derived from the study of the mix of African and French pottery in the excavation will be part of a book Hinchman is writing on French colonial architecture and the functions of domestic materials in Africa in the 18th century.

Hinchman spent spring break on Gorée Island photographing ruins, doing architectural measuring and participating in an excavation sponsored by National Geographic. He was assisted by Jeff Erb, a senior interior design student from West Point, Neb., and a participant in the Pepsi Endowment-sponsored Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experiences program, or UCARE.

The research will aid Hinchman in writing a book that is an outgrowth of his Ph.D. research at the University of Chicago. Hinchman will take a leave of absence from the university for a year to work on the project, which is funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Getty Research Grant, Graham Foundation and Camargo Foundation.

"You could call my book 'A Day in the Life of 18th Century Senegal,' or 'House and Household in Early Modern West Africa,' " he said.

"My work is an examination of identity, how people construct their personae by the choices they make regarding how they live."

The examination of the inhabitants' lifestyles will be supported by other artifacts the archaeologists found amid the crushed seashell and sand soil of the former waste sites of the dwellings, he said. The artifacts include bone relics of consumed fish and chicken - food waste that provides clues to the health and wealth of the inhabitants, Hinchman said.

The island's architecture was influenced by a variety of cultures, he said. The houses of West African traders were built with American wood and local masonry products. They also held French furniture, German tools and African and Indian textiles.

"The history of these buildings is very complicated, because the two islands of my study were slave-trading centers and they've become important sites of memory (for slave descendants)," he said.

Gorée Island was one of two island trading centers along the West Coast of Africa, connecting Africa with the Atlantic trade routes to Europe and the Americas roughly between 1444 and 1850. The islands' diverse populations and slave traders included Europeans such as the Dutch, English and French; and Africans such as the Bambara, Moor, Tukulor and Wolof.

Today, Gorée Island has become a popular tourist destination despite some controversy over whether it was truly a major slave-trading center on the Atlantic coast. The Maison des Esclaves, or House of Slaves, attracts many descendants of African slaves who are tracing their roots.

Erb helped Hinchman take photographs and document the artifacts. He said his experiences on Gorée Island have made him more knowledgeable about African culture and its architecture.

"I found the island paradise that I had been hoping for - beautiful beaches, colors and people," Erb said. "The trip increased my ability to understand a culture unlike my own."

Erb doesn't know how the experience will directly affect his design abilities, but he believes the ideas he gained from the project will evolve at some point into his designs, and that the experience exemplifies what "essential studies" provide students at the university.

Erb also made an important and helpful observation during the trip, Hinchman said, by pointing out that the trees surrounding the site had been planted in a grid pattern and therefore were not natural.

Hinchman said Erb's design skills would also help in completing 3-D drawings and computer models that re-create the construction of the 18th century homes and businesses on Gorée Island.

Hinchman also hopes to offer a summer program in Senegal with Leon Caldwell, assistant professor of educational psychology.

Caldwell said the proposed program would invite a discussion on the reciprocal influence of the Africans on the French.

Chancellor Installation, Speech Are Next Week

Harvey Perlman will be installed as the 19th chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Aug. 23, and the next day, he will deliver his annual "State of the University" address.

Both events will be at the Lied Center for Performing Arts, 301 N. 12th St., and are free and open to the public. Perlman's installation ceremony will begin at 3 p.m. The State of the University address begins at 11 a.m.

Joan Leitzel, president of the University of New Hampshire, will be the keynote speaker at the installation, which will include representatives from the UNL faculty, other universities, and academic and professional societies. Leitzel was senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at Nebraska from 1992 until 1996, when she left for UNH. Her Nebraska tenure included six months (August 1995 through February 1996) as interim chancellor between the terms of Graham Spanier and James Moeser. During that period, Perlman, then dean of the NU College of Law, was acting senior vice chancellor for academic affairs.

The State of the University address will be followed by an all-university picnic for students, faculty and staff in the Sheldon Sculpture Gardens, north of the Lied Center.

Both events will be broadcast live on NebSat channel 102, UNL campus channel 8, KRNU radio (90.3 FM), and the World Wide Web at http://www.unl.edu.