News and Progress

J-School family and friends remember faculty at centennial celebration

Rooms named for Professors Edward Lambert and Dale Spencer

Sept. 11, 2008

From Sept. 10–12, 2008, alumni, students, journalists, communicators and academics from all over the world descended on Columbia to celebrate the centennial of the world’s first journalism school — the Missouri School of Journalism — and the dedication of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.

The J-School first published the student-staffed University Missourian on Sept. 14, 1908, and has since been an international leader in hands-on journalism education known as the “Missouri Method.” Its curriculum takes advantage of new technologies and practices, a tradition that will be extended with the opening of the Reynolds Journalism Institute.

The institute — created with an initial $31 million gift from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation in Las Vegas — is a 50,000-square-foot facility that will allow researchers to test and demonstrate new technologies and experiment with convergence news production and delivery systems.

In a tribute to two faculty members who embodied the J-School principles of innovation and education, J-School supporters established endowments and named seminar rooms in the institute to honor Professors Edward C. Lambert and Dale R. Spencer.

The Edward C. Lambert Innovation Endowment and Seminar Room (200-A) recognize Lambert’s contributions to broadcast journalism.

“More than 50 years ago, Dr. Lambert brought a vision to the Journalism School with the concept of launching KOMU as a real-life learning laboratory for broadcast journalism students,” says Mike Wheeler, BJ ’71. In 1953, Lambert founded KOMU-TV/Channel 8, the only university-owned commercial television affiliate in the world used as a training lab for students. Wheeler and Paul Fiddick, BJ ’71, came up with the idea to honor Lambert.

“Ed Lambert was, as they say, truly a gentleman and a scholar,” Fiddick says. “Naming the Lambert seminar room has been a labor of love. The response from Ed’s friends, family and former students was immediate, generous and heartwarming.”

Spencer’s family and friends established the Dale R. Spencer Free-Press Studies Endowment and Seminar Room (200-B) to commemorate Spencer’s advocacy of open government and his efforts to strengthen journalists’ understanding of the law.

“It’s been my dream to find a way to create a legacy for my dad at the J-School,” says his daughter, Melinda Machones of Duluth Minn., who established the endowment with her mother, Joy Spencer Johnson, BJ ’48, MBA ’82, of Columbia and sister, Jennifer Ambrose of Burton, Ohio.

“My father’s passion for teaching students to think about the First Amendment and its relevance to current events is how he is best remembered,” Machones says. “Our hope is that this endowment will help extend that focus and passion, bringing his perspectives to a new generation of students and into the future.“