FAMU J-School Settles into New Building

The School of Journalism and Graphic Communication (SJGC) moved into its new 100,000 square foot, $25 million building this past October. The new building provides aspiring communications professionals a cutting-edge environment to hone their skills before they enter the workforce. The facility is digitally equipped and features smart classrooms, TV production studios and edit bays, digital press room, two television stations and five radio studios.

The FAMU J-School teaches its students about the importance and power of words, and how critical it is to have women and minorities participate in the telling of the human story in America.

"We had outgrown the Tucker Hall years ago," Dean James Hawkins said of the school's previous home. "We want to prepare our students for the journalism world that is changing rapidly. This building has been a long time coming, and what we're looking to do in this facility is to make sure our students have the skills to be competitive."

“We still have some finishing touches that need to be made, but this is a far cry from where we started 30 years ago,” Hawkins added.

The new facility was 10 years in the making and is the dream of J-School founding dean Robert Ruggles.

School has come a long way
The SJGC began in a small classroom in the basement of FAMU’s Tucker Hall, where Prof. Thelma Thurston Gorham taught journalism as part of the English course offerings in the 1970s. The Division of Journalism was the first journalism program at a historically black university to be nationally accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications in 1982.

The Division of Graphic Communication began as a trades program by Prof. James Bruton, and was accredited in 2002 by the Accrediting Council on Collegiate Graphic Communication.

Since its humble beginnings, the SJGC has merged into two divisions providing eight major program tracks: newspaper, magazine production, broadcast (television and radio) public relations graphic design, printing production, printing management and photography. The school offers bachelors and masters degrees.