PULLMAN – One of WSU’s most distinguished graduates, Edward R. Murrow, is highlighted in the City University of New York’s (CUNY) 2010 calendar, website and curriculum project.
More than 100 public colleges and universities in all 50 states, including WSU, contributed to the project, called “Investing in Futures: Public Higher Education in America,” by sharing historic images and milestones from their own past.
A famous CBS radio and television broadcaster and 1930 WSU speech graduate, Murrow was selected by the CUNY project as one of eight Public Higher Education Superstars along with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Nobel Prize winner Gertrude Elion and others. Murrow also is featured in the calendar’s August 2010 spread on free speech and campus protest.
“We appreciate CUNY’s focus on the importance of investing in public higher education in America, and are pleased to see Ed Murrow featured,” WSU President Elson S. Floyd said.
“This is a reminder that Murrow’s historic role transcends journalism,” said Lawrence Pintak, founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication. “He was an educator on a campus writ large by broadcasting.”
Murrow’s name is prominent at his alma mater, with the WSU Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, annual Edward R. Murrow Symposium and Edward R. Murrow Awards for exceptional journalistic achievement named in his honor.
Murrow received the WSU Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1963, recognizing his influential “This is London” radio broadcasts during World War II, his first television “news personality” programs such as “See It Now” and “Person to Person,” and his role in setting professional standards for broadcast journalists. The Murrow legacy is remembered online at WSU here.
Raised in Blanchard, Wash., Murrow died in 1965.
The 2010 calendar and curriculum project is the sixth such collaboration bringing together CUNY, the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and the New York Times Knowledge Network, with support provided by founding sponsors JPMorgan Chase and TIAA-CREF.
“We are particularly enthused about this year’s calendar, which underscores our country’s historic commitment to advanced learning and the importance of a strong system of public colleges and universities to America’s social and economic well-being,” said Craig Dunn, New York Times’ Education Partnerships manager.
The Investing In Futures project is online here.