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Throwback Thursday

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A Periodic Tale of Departmental Lore (Part 2)

Written by David Lapakko

Surprise, surprise–not that long ago, communication technology was quite different in our department and on this campus. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, we had this amazing piece of machinery called a VHS player. With it, we could see instructional videos in class and record student presentations–how cool was that? But, this equipment had to be housed somewhere. 171 Foss, which is now a suite for the offices of our department faculty, was Augsburg’s A/V headquarters for many years. If you wanted to show a video in class, you needed to reserve a cart–a tall, gangly thing that had a large TV monitor on the top shelf and a VHS player on the shelf underneath. These top-heavy metal behemoths were on wheels, and there were perhaps a dozen of them.

Throughout the day, you’d see A/V student workers pushing these carts all over campus to classrooms where they had been reserved. It didn’t matter if there was a blizzard or a thunderstorm; someone had to push them through the snow, across the streets, and over the curbs. And, you counted yourself as fortunate to get one, because sometimes they were all in use in particular time slots. Back then, if you wanted to record student presentations, you could go to the library and check out a camera. But there were not things like mp4s, or online links, so if students wanted to see what they had done, they needed to get the VHS tape and find a place to play it.

In the meantime, technology was revolutionizing faculty offices. Throughout most of the 20th century, students would have to be very lucky to contact their professors. They could try them during their posted office hours, or they could phone them, but if the person wasn’t in, they were pretty much sunk. But then, along came voicemail! Now we could leave recorded messages for faculty and staff, 24/7. Especially in the early ‘90s, voicemail was all the rage; my goodness, you could program the phone to include all the phone extensions in your department, and send them all a group voicemail message. Now, of course, we would send such a note via email, but that wasn’t an option back then. Still, we felt quite privileged to have such state of the art equipment–including overhead projectors in every classroom!

Next time: When “working adults” roamed around campus by the hundreds–the glorious era
of Weekend College.

 

Throwback Thursday

Posted on

A Periodic Tale of Departmental Lore (Part 1)

Written by David Lapakko

If you were an Augsburg student prior to 1988, Lindell Library and Oren Gateway Center didn’t exist–in fact, in their place was the college’s main parking lot. What would become Foss Center was simply a bare plot of land. Occupying the edge of the main parking lot on 22nd and Riverside was a rickety old building that housed North Country Coop, a predecessor to places like Whole Foods and The Wedge. It’s where Auggies and residents of Cedar-Riverside got their bagels and granola.  

Your classes were likely to be in the Science Building or Old Main. You would not be majoring in Communication Studies, but rather, Speech Communication. And you would be in a joint department–the Department of Speech, Communication, and Theatre–with, as often as not, a chair who was a theatre professor. Some theatre professors even taught COM 111 on a fairly regular basis.

In the mid-‘80s, you wouldn’t be taking Intercultural Communication, Introduction to Communication Studies, Research Methods, Nonverbal Communication, or Family Communication because none of these courses existed. And there was no forensics program either.

When Foss was opened in the fall of ’88, it was designed with the idea that all the communication faculty could easily fit into the corridor that houses 178-180 Foss, which has three offices (currently occupied by Professors Groven, Chamberlain, and Lapakko). Who in their right mind could imagine a communication department with more than three full-time faculty? Now, of course, we have six, if you include film and new media studies.  

In short, the ‘80s were in many ways a simpler time, and our footprint on campus was more modest.

Next time:  When the VHS era was in full swing and voicemail arrived!