Communication leaders cap career
Rubins leave imprint on academic program, research
By Margaret Garmon Communication Studies Doctoral Student

After a combined 44 years with Kent State University in communication studies, Alan and Rebecca Rubin are retiring and moving to the next phase of their careers. Alan was director of the School of Communication Studies and Rebecca, or Becky, as she is known to her colleagues, was coordinator of graduate studies. Both also served as professors.

Their interest in communication had been instilled in them early in life, well before they enrolled in college - Alan at Queens College of City University of New York and Becky at Pennsylvania State University at University Park.

Like most baby boomers, Alan was among the first generation to grow up with television. Growing up in New York City put Alan in the media capital of the world where his first experiences with television included being in the audience when many television shows were broadcast live and on tape.

“I got to go to live studio broadcasts of the Howdy Doody Show where I had a front row seat – literally, in the Peanut Gallery – and got to see what went into the production of a television show,” Alan said.

Alan also was among the studio audiences who saw classic TV quiz shows such as “To Tell the Truth.” Even though he was 14 years old when the Kennedy-Nixon Debates were broadcast on television, Alan recalled that the presidential race of 1960 was the first campaign for the presidency in which TV debates made a real impact.

To his graduate students and colleagues, it should not come as a surprise that Alan’s many research interests would include the impact of television in our lives, effects of mass media and influence of political communication.

Becky majored in broadcasting as a student at Penn State. Her career goal at the time was to produce television programs, but the television industry of the 1970s was not kind to women. But by her senior year Becky had been certified to teach speech and after completing her student teaching assignment, found that teaching was something she really enjoyed. The change from studio to classroom would benefit her students many times over.

Graduate School at Penn State reinforced the desire to teach and do research. “You don’t know the answers when you start out. That is where the joy of research comes in - not knowing what is out there. The ‘discovery part’ is still intriguing to me,” Becky said.

“We look at it as kind of a puzzle – trying to figure out the way things fit together,” she added in describing the research she and Alan have collaborated on over the years.

By the 1970s, both were pursuing doctoral degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where they met. The field of communication was embarking on a new era with interest in effects of mass media, influence of political communication, understanding of how public opinion is formed and interpersonal communication.

By the early 1980s, higher education was considering how to teach students to be prepared for this new era of communication, and Alan and Becky joined the KSU faculty. For Becky, Jerry Feezel was her professional connection to teach in the then School of Speech. For Alan, Tom Olson was his professional connection as a researcher in telecommunications to work with graduate students in the doctoral area.

“We had been recruited to go elsewhere, but we stayed at Kent because we saw all the possibilities for growth in the communication area. Kent also had a solid core of researchers both in communication and from several other disciplines,” Alan said.

In addition to the full teaching course load, they still kept up their research with the result that “60 to 72 hour weeks were not out of the ordinary,” Becky said.

As communication scholars, they have attracted international attention and honors at the state and national levels, events that Alan refers to as “things that just happen.” The real gratification comes in how these things that just happen help raise recognition of the department, attract students and maintain contact with former students. The department has a strong and diverse representation of international students from Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle and Far East.

For now, Alan and Becky plan to continue their research. More new innovation and technological advancements continue to change the way we communicate. The digital divide of “haves” and “have-nots” is a special interest. The have-nots will include more poor and older people in the population, according to Alan.

“Aging and communication include how we provide information for older people, especially good health and financial information. At one time just owning a television set kept them connected, now the Internet keeps them connected. Whether the older population will be able to access to the Internet will affect the quality of their life,” Alan said.

Researching the ability of users to operate a complicated medium is another area of interest, according to Becky.

“When we just had television, it was easy to operate the medium – turn it on, select a channel. With the VCR, DVD and Internet, it gets much more complicated. You need all of the equipment as well as the competency to operate complicated technology,” Becky said.

Not only will they explore how the new technology of computers, Internet and more television viewing choices affect us, but how people substitute these things for contact and company of other people. Their findings will no doubt help in understanding how the everyday communication devices (such as cell phones) that we take for granted are changing the very nature of interaction on a person-to-person level.

Reprinted courtesy of Record-Courier