Board members attend Media School inauguration

Oct. 23, 2014

Four members of the IJHF Board of Directors and the executive director attended the inauguration of the new Media School Oct. 17 in Franklin Hall on the Indiana University Bloomington campus.

Board members Ray Boomhower, Media School associate dean Lesa Hatley Major, Ray Moscowitz, and Nelson Price, and executive director Larry Taylor joined about 150 other people in Presidents Hall, Franklin Hall.

IU President Michael A. McRobbie presided at the event that featured remarks by Provost Lauren Robel, Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Larry Singell and telecommunications professor Maria Elizabeth Grabe.

Hollywood actor Jonathan Banks, who attended IU in the 1970s and whose daughter is an IU student, also spoke.

The Media School was established July 1, and merged the former School of Journalism and the departments of telecommunications and communication and culture. Its curriculum goes into effect in fall 2015, and the school will be housed in Franklin Hall in 2016 after the building undergoes $21 million in renovations.

The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame also will relocate from Ernie Pyle Hall to Franklin Hall when the building is complete.

As part of the ceremony, McRobbie dedicated a new bronze sculpture, "Ernie Pyle at Work," by Harold “Tuck” Langland, who also created the iconic Herman B Wells piece for the university. The sculpture shows the WWII correspondent at his typewriter at a makeshift desk and is situated near the entrance to Franklin Hall. Pyle was inducted into the inaugural class of the IJHF in 1966.

A search for the founding dean of The Media School is under way.