The UNM Communication and Journalism department has withdrawn it application for reaccredidation from the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Members of the accreditation team were at UNM Monday and Tuesday to evaluate the department.
Brad Hall, chairman of Communication and Journalism, said that the department met and decided that a withdrawal of the application was the best option considering the feedback they received from the accreditation team. The department will not be an accredited program after the spring semester.
Hall said that accreditation would not affect students due to graduate in the 2002-03 school year and that accreditation may not be necessary in the future.
"We're going to try to tap the local media and the student body to see how important the accreditation is," Hall said. "We've been told by some people it really is a side issue. If we find that the accreditation is vital then my guess is that the faculty will do what they need to do to get it back."
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Associate Professor Bob Gassaway said that the decision was unfortunate.
"Obviously we weren't going to be re-accredited," Gassaway said. "We've been accredited for about 50 years. It is not going to change the education of the student yet. We will keep training the students in print, broadcasting and advertising. But I hope we're able to resolve this and become reaccredited."
Hall said that the accreditation team did give some positive feedback, noting that the broadcast program was the strongest of those evaluated.
He said, however, that the evaluators had mixed reviews on the advertising and print programs.
"Print is in a situation where we're in a flux," he said. "That's why we're hiring someone right now."
Hall said that it if the department decides not to re-apply it could end up as a benefit to the students in the department. He said the process costs thousands of dollars and the money may be better spent to serve the student.
"It costs thousands of dollars for the accreditation process," he said. "We need to see if that money could be better spent on equipment that would better serve the students in the department."
Associate Professor Emeritus Henry Trewhitt, a former editor and international journalist who was given the department's lifetime achievement award in 1999, said that the loss of the accreditation could not benefit the students in any way.
"That may be the egregious rationalization I ever heard," Trewhitt said. "It sounds as if they are going to provide better paper and pencils to students who no longer come because the department has flunked. It's too bad. The problem is that journalism has been run for several years now by people who know nothing about journalism."
