Header image: @LaSalleUniv via Twitter
Welcome to a new series of editorial pieces in which we highlight some of the landmarks around La Salle’s campus that are formative, important, positive or interesting. Across campus, there are places we come and go to every day, but depending on what major or concentration students find themselves in, some of these places might feel a bit more like “home” than others. For many La Salle students and graduates, the La Salle Communication Center becomes a home away from their residence hall or place of living. Currently, there are around 150 students registered as communication majors, and hundreds of students have graduated from the program since it was founded.
The beauty of having a university as educationally diverse as this one is that we all experience the campus, and all it has to offer, very differently. While many students will find themselves in each academic building at least once during their time at La Salle, it’s not just the buildings that matter, but the unique culture that each building’s teaching staff and student body brings. The Communication Center is always buzzing with creative ideas, whether its students discussing their projects in the lounge, La Salle TV hosts organizing segments and bits for their upcoming episodes or professors talking to students about their career prospects and goals. We find the culture of the Communication Center to be one of teamwork and camaraderie where people can feel free to express not only their opinions, but their creativity.
La Salle’s communication program is ranked 34th in the North Region on U.S. based on the News & World Report’s 2018 list of best colleges, and with good reason. Communication is an extremely competitive field, and while La Salle may not have a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art recording studio or creation hub like say University of Maryland or Ohio University, it still facilitates students’ drive to create to an extremely personalized degree. The program is split up between public relations, mass media and journalism, interpersonal communication and now sports communication. The com majors on the Collegian staff are split between these programs and we can say definitively that the freedom of choice the com program gives is unlike anything else. We have partnered with La Salle TV to bolster our sports section by hosting “SportsLine” on the Collegian’s website. We have a large crossover with students from the mass media and journalism concentration, with courses such as in-depth journalism and news writing helping students get connected with our paper.
The walls of the Com Center are lined with success stories of alumni that have moved into jobs in media, public relations, news, creative writing fields, technical writing fields, interpersonal communication and counseling-related jobs and many, many more. Former editors for the Collegian make up parts of these walls, and others make up parts of our news influences at local and regional outlets like ABC10 and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
When what is currently the Communication Center opened in 1964 as a school for orphaned girls run by the Sisters of St. Basil the Great, the building was not exactly designed to be a powerhouse for journalism, media and public relations, but that’s exactly what it is. The culture of communication at La Salle is working from the ground up and making a name for yourself on campus, just like it is in the actual communication field, and we believe the program as a whole reflects this as students make the most of their opportunities in the small, old building every day.
Images courtesy of Jakob Eiseman
The Communication Center sits removed from most of campus’s academic buildings, and pales in comparison visually and architecturally to Founder’s Hall, but that does not make it any less important to us at the Collegian, to communication students and to La Salle’s impact as a community on the communication industry. While Founder’s Hall is a spectacle in itself, which will no doubt be featured in The places that shape us, the Communication Center, and those that call it home, still manage to hold themselves up to the looming business school, the incredible nursing program and the wide variety of talented groups within the school of arts and sciences and say “we will succeed, no matter what.”
If you have suggestions for what place, building or landmark on campus we should cover next, please feel free to send suggestions to collegian@lasalle.edu. We are looking forward to diving deep into the culture and community that surrounds each specific area on campus this year and need your help to get insight into what makes our campus special.
— The Editorial Board
The La Salle Collegian 