Plans currently call for the possible termination of the IUP Journalism & Public Relations Department, as part of the dissolution of the College of Humanities & Social Sciences.

As a Journalism student, I am urging you in the strongest possible way to help us petition the university to abandon any plans to eliminate our department at the university.  Instead, a ready-made solution should be followed, to merge Journalism & PR with the Communications Media Department, and house this new entity within the College of Education and Communications.

My department has produced five Pulitzer Prize winners, and has sent hundreds of well-trained writers into the workforce who now lead efforts in government, business, academia, and social services nationwide and internationally.  There is no reason to eliminate Journalism at IUP, and every reason to move it forward under this merger concept.  

This merger would address a number of admittedly crucial issues, such as improving faculty-to-student ratios, enhancing the economic efficiency of the new department, ensuring an increase in student enrollment, and vastly elevating the entire experience of students in this combined and comprehensive course of study.  The best part is that this solution has already been fully developed, and had received preliminary approvals at the highest academic and administrative levels of IUP.

In a world increasingly increasingly driven by media, never has it been more important to foster trusted, trained and truth-seeking professionals. We are the Journalism & Public Relations Department of IUP, and we ask for your support.