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Wilbur Schramm came to Illinois in 1947 as the director of a newly created Institute
of Communications, and soon began work that would add educational programming to both
radio and television. Schramm convinced the National Association of Educational Broadcasters
to hold their 1948 convention in Urbana. The following year, he solicited the Rockefeller
Foundation to fund a two-week conference at the University's Allerton Park Conference
Center. This conference, in conjunction with the subsequent one in 1950, marked the birth
of public broadcasting in the United States. From 1951 to 1961, the National Association
of Educational Broadcasters was located in the basement of Illinois' Gregory Hall. The
Association was a precursor to both the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public
Radio. Originally an English major at Harvard, Schramm
had a speech impediment and sought help at a speech clinic at the University of Iowa.
This experience ignited his passion for communication as a science. He conducted original studies
in communication and believed - as he said - that, "The very existence of man may depend
on the quality of communication on earth." Schramm believed radio would take the place
of newspapers in covering spot news, and that newspapers would eventually assume "some functions
of magazines," - innovative thinking for the time that proved true.
While at the University of Iowa, Schramm founded the Iowa Writers Workshop. His own fiction
earned the 1942 O. Henry prize. He was also known as a journalist, a pilot, and an accomplished
musician.