Records of the Communication Arts Group

The Communication Arts Group (CAG), predecessor to the Tisch School of the Arts, was New York University's first attempt to integrate some of its many departments dealing with communications and the dramatic arts into one administrative unit. Organized in 1954 as a result of the Committee on Radio and Television's Proposal for a School of Communication Arts (1953), the CAG originally consisted of five departments from three schools: the Departments of Radio and Journalism of the School of Commerce; the Department of Motion Pictures and Television of Washington Square College; and the Departments of Dramatic Arts and Communications in Education at the School of Education. In 1957, the Department of Radio was transferred from the School of Commerce to Washington Square College where it merged with the renamed Department of Television, Motion Pictures and Radio. And in 1960, the Department of Journalism was also moved into Washington Square College.

The CAG was the coordinating agency for these departments of instruction between 1954 and 1966. While more than a department, the CAG was far from being a separate school and had neither faculty nor quarters it could truly call its own. Nevertheless, in its twelve-year existence, the CAG was involved in a number of activities, the foremost of which was closed-circuit television instruction at NYU.

The only administrators of the Communication Arts Group were the Executive Officer and his assistant. The Executive Officer made sure that classes, faculty, and facilities all meshed neatly together. He represented the various elements of the CAG to the University administration and to the deans of the respective schools that made up the Group. In addition, he helped make policy for the Group and participated in CAG projects, such as closed-circuit television and various communications conferences. Harvey Zorbaugh, professor of Educational Sociology and Anthropology in the School of Education, was the first and only Executive Officer of CAG, holding the post from 1954 to 1961. His assistant since 1956, Professor Richard Goggin, became acting Executive Officer in 1961 and held the position until 1966, when the CAG was succeeded by the School of the Arts (later named the Tisch School of the Arts). It does not appear that the position of Executive Officer was ever considered a full-time post; from 1956 to 1966, Goggin was also chairman of the Department of Television, Motion Pictures and Radio.

CAG members were dissatisfied from the beginning with the position of the communication arts at NYU. As early as 1954, the Executive Officer was pleading with the University administration for an independent school, devoted to communications and the creative arts. It was not until 1962, however, that the Ad-Hoc Committee for the Creation of a Communication Arts Center at the University was formed. Later, in February 1963, the University appointed a Committee for the Creation of a School of Creative Arts and Communications. In June 1964, the Committee made its final recommendations, all of which were accepted by the administration soon thereafter. It was not until the 1966-1967 academic year that the new School of the Arts was in full operation.