Collection contains records created by the Mass Communication Department and public radio
station WUWM of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The records of the Dept. of Mass
Communication (series 1) contain correspondence of the department chair (1951-1976)
documenting the creation of the department, its goals, and activities such as the
curriculum, staffing and policy needs. It also includes minutes of the executive committee
(1970-1979) and faculty meeting minutes (1970-1974).
The WUWM General Files (series 2) document station programming and, to a lesser extent, the
staffing and technical needs of the station. The correspondence of the director (1963-1983)
provides details on the operations and activities of the station including equipment
purchases, staffing needs, policy decisions and employee relations. For example, some 1969
letters to the dean of the College of Letters and Science concern controversies after
profane language had been used on the air. The station director's memos also document the
policies and the needs of the station for 1978 and 1979. One folder contains information on
African American programs on the station, and a series of folders documents the station's
financial and programming connections to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Series 3-10 include audio reel recordings of the College Talk
program, the Grass Roots program, the East Side Issues program, the University
Roundtable program, the Milwaukee Ideas program,
the UWM Today program, the Chancellor's Report, and other miscellaneous programs. The tapes were recorded at
varying speeds and are organized by sequential numbers. Most of the audio reels are from the
Grass Roots program, which covered local Milwaukee politics
between 1964 and 1966. The host interviewed public officials, including Lloyd Barbee, John
Doyne, Warren Knowles, Gaylord Nelson, Henry Reuss, and Clement Zablocki. Tape 117 is a
recording of Robert F. Kennedy speaking at a political rally for Patrick Lucey at UWM's
Baker Field House on September 17, 1966. A number of recordings concern conditions and
policies at Wisconsin prisons. A College Talk program tape
includes interviews with African American families concerning the housing situation in
Milwaukee in 1969.
The University Roundtable, Milwaukee
Ideas and UWM Today recordings cover a mixture of
UWM-specific topics, reports on faculty research, and current events interpreted by UWM
faculty and staff. University Roundtable, the earliest of
these, took the form of conversations between Station manager Dave Edwards and Chancellors
John Schroeder and Nancy Zimpher, and discussed topics such as Sexual Discrimination
awareness on campus, the state budget and its effect on UWM, and the UWM Basketball program.
These programs were not preserved in their full runs; much of 1996-1999 is not represented
at all in this collection.
The later programs moved to a weekly schedule and are much more comprehensive, though gaps
in the collection do still exist. Specific topics from these shows include the Peck School
of the Arts performance schedule for the upcoming year, discussion of local and national
political races, an overview by Prof. Barry Rousseau of his research in volcanology, updates
on UWM student community-building in New Orleans post-Katrina, and UWM Athletics previews.
Of particular interest are Chancellor Nancy Zimpher's discussion of UWM's response to the
9/11/2001 terrorist attacks, as well as the large number of Freshwater Studies-related
programs, which describe the work being done by the Great Lakes WATER Institute and, after
2009, the School of Freshwater Studies.
The Chancellor's Report recordings, which span over both
Milwaukee Ideas and UWM
Today, served as a monthly forum for the Chancellor to publicly discuss the issues
facing their office and UWM as a whole, and provide an excellent month-to-month summary of
the Chancellor's activities and what they considered important that month. Recordings are
present in the collection from Chancellors Nancy Zimpher (1998-2003), Carlos Santiago
(2004-2010), and Michael Lovell (2010-2014). The records of the Office of the Chancellor
(UWM Archival Collection 46) contain program notes and supplementary materials for many of
these recordings, after 2003 in electronic format.
