Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Somewhat interesting. Dean Wartella has been Dean at UT's school of communications for years and years and years. It looks like she's off to sunny California.

I spent 5 years in the College of Communications while at UT, and I can say Wartella had a profound impact on my life. She showed me that I can spend five years somewhere and never have the slightest clue that my college has a Dean. The School of Communications was always critically underfunded, terribly organized and showed little or no interest in any of it's actual undergraduate students. The Department of Radio-Telelvision-Film itself felt often as if it were being managed by drunk lemurs, with no clear path for graduation or real standards for students to meet. Grad students hung out for up to ten years, and decisions were made mid-stream which screwed crucially with my entire graduating class who was in the production track.

No clear path of communication was ever given. If the College had anything resembling an Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, I don't know who it was. One of the primary roles of a Dean is to seek funding for a College. not once while I was in the College, or in the years following, have I read about any major award to UT's College of Communication.

Career services consisted of a desk with a student worker who's job it was to point at a pile of outdated books and suggest you browse them. The job board consisted of opportunities at HEB and some telemarketing firms.

But mostly, I never even heard the Wartella's name until we were told what was going to happen while we lined up for graduation. I had good reason to assume nobody was actually in charge, because, by God, it felt that way 90% of the time. So farewell, Dean Wartella. Have fun wherever you go. You were a lousy Dean and nobody will ever notice you parted ways with the College.

Oh, and Paul Stekler is a dick.

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