Homepage of the Our History digital timeline featuring Thomas Marshall Clark
The Bob Schieffer College of Communication marks its 10th anniversary as a named college by digging 150 years into its past.
From the founding of TCU, communication has been an integral part of students’ education, and a new Schieffer College digital timeline connects the dots of that communication education over the years.
Schieffer’s timeline shows that in 1873, AddRan College founders Addison and Randolph Clark asked their younger brother Thomas Marshall Clark to teach the earliest students Oratory, a course that laid the foundation for today’s required core course in effective oral communication.
Featured points on the 150-year Schieffer timeline include:
- The 1900 establishment of the college’s first debating society, which offered a $10 prize to the winner of an annual debate.
- The offering of the university’s first courses in journalism (1909), advertising (1923) and radio (1938).
- The 1902 launch of The Skiff, which is, rather unusually, a student newspaper named for a rowboat.
- The historic moment in 1935 when TCU invited debaters from Wiley College to compete against them in what was the first interracial college debate in the U.S. South.
- The 1982 dedication of the Moudy Building whose unique design was intended to reflect the latest trends in communication education.
The timeline features historic newspaper and yearbook pages, photos, video clips and podcasts created by current students, who interviewed such stakeholders as TCU Chancellor Victor J. Boschini. Outstanding alumni and pioneering faculty members are also included in the timeline.