LaVar Bateman

From College of Fine Arts and Communications

In 1982 LaVar Bateman became the fifteenth chair of the Department of Communications. He had come from a speech background, specializing in speech communications, discussion, parliamentary debate, public address and ESL.

Bateman had graduated from BYU prior to WWII and received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin.

During his administration, from 1982-1985 Bateman had responsibility to hire eight new faculty, to replace those retiring. With bringing in new faculty members, Bateman felt it was time to change the focus of the department to scholarly research.

Bateman felt so strongly about the role of research in education that he made it a requirement for promotion within the department. Some of the professors who had been at BYU for several years protested saying that they were hired on different grounds. Bateman insisted that this was the new policy, and as faculty began to be passed over for promotions, they realized that Bateman was serious (Pratte, 31).

References

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