Greenlee Director Michael Bugeja

From the director

Our Centennial year officially begins in May, but we're eager to celebrate before the semester ends.

So our First Amendment Days celebration this April–a week-long slate of activities, with one day set aside for each of the five freedoms–is our inaugural event honoring our benefactors and friends and featuring such distinguished speakers as Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center; Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom; Michael Kent Curtis, law professor at Wake Forest University; Mary Beth and John Tinker, whose 1969 case (Tinker vs. Des Moines School District) went to the Supreme Court; Hugh Sidey, former White House correspondent for Time; Karol DeWulf Nickell, editor of Better Homes & Gardens; and David Stoeffler, vice president for news at Lee Enterprises Inc.

Lee Enterprises is co-sponsoring the First Amendment event with the Greenlee School.

The second Centennial event will be Aug. 10-13 in San Antonio at the national convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. A reception is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 11.

Last year we said we planned to "paper" AEJMC with our research, posters, teaching presentations, discussions and panel topics–and we're on the way to doing that with more than 20 faculty and student papers submitted and a book award in media ethics research to be presented.

The AEJMC event especially recognizes the role of research and the contributions of our graduate program.

Homecoming 2005 will be the next date to mark on your calendars and PDAs. Plans for that will be announced later. Rest assured, however, that we also will make this an event to remember, celebrating campus life in educational, creative ways across our emphases–advertising, electronic media studies, newspaper, magazine, public relations, science communication and visual communication. These are benchmark events.

Throughout the year we will be sponsoring dozens of additional mini-events during the calendar year, from guest speakers to displays in Hamilton Hall.

We also have some objectives. We're not only celebrating 100 years of service. We also are looking ahead with specific goals.

We hope the Centennial will accomplish the following:

* Instilling a deep, abiding pride in our students, alumni, benefactors and friends for the historic role of the Greenlee School, producing winners of five Pulitzer Prizes, a Medal of Freedom and countless other creative and entrepreneurial successes.

* Enhancing our alumni base, especially through the recently formed Greenlee Society of Friends, recruiting recent graduates to work on special projects throughout the year.

* Remodeling the remainder of Hamilton Hall. We have a beautiful main floor, but our lower and second floors need to have the same sparkle and utility as our remodeled sections.

These are significant and symbolic goals. We want our students to live up to the legacy of the past and our graduates to remain connected as active alumni with the Greenlee School.

Finally, we hope a fully remodeled building will be an enduring hallmark of our success, and the Centennial offers us a fitting occasion to look forward with excitement and anticipation.

We also will be looking to our alumni and friends for financial support to remodel our facilities. There will be naming opportunities here–rooms, student centers, even offices–and we'll communicate those during the year.

And what a year it promises to be!

You are a part of that year, along with our past and our future. You will find that out for yourselves as you browse through our Centennial site.

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