Brent Peterson

From College of Fine Arts and Communications

Brent Peterson was the first department chair who did not have background in speech, journalism, English or publicity or other areas of mass media. He was however highly educated, having received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at BYU and his Ph.D. from Ohio University.

In 1972 when Peterson returned to BYU, he introduced the first organizational communication courses and worked with Wayne Pace to create the human resource development sequence, all of which was eventually moved to the College of Business.

From 1979-1982 Peterson served as department chair. One of the major difficulties of his administration was resolving the ongoing disputes between the print and broadcast journalists. After reviewing the situation, Peterson decided to divide the print and broadcast journalists, reversing the decision that M. Dallas Burnett had made a year earlier.

Brent served as Associate Dean from 1982-1984 under Dean James Mason (Pratte, 30).

References

• Somewhere Between Mount Olympus and Mount Everest, Paul Alfred Pratte, 2003.