Goodbye, Dana

In November 2006, I was a first-semester student here at Millikin (although far from a first-year student in general - I’d been in college for about 4 years previously). I’d played around with web stuff for quite a while, having become a webmaster for another site the same year and developing personal knowledge on my own. As a publishing requirement for my major, I took web publishing that first semester with the ever-delightful Dr. Randy Brooks, which was a fun experience that helped expand my knowledge further.

Then at the end of the month, I received an E-mail from Dana Williams, the recently hired assistant adviser of the Decaturian saying she’d been given my name by Dr. Brooks as a possible candidate for the position of online editor. And the rest, while not quite history, happened from there.

Dana, as I came to find out, is an alumna of the university, having been off to D.C. to work for various news outlets (including the Freedom Forum) and get a Masters from American University and then called back after moving back to Illinois and having a son, Xander (who I can testify personally is quite the little man - by the way, Dana, I’m still serious about arranging for our kids to play together again). Dr. Brooks personally called her back to serve as assistant adviser when Dr. Priscilla Meddaugh, adviser, was named Hardy Distinguished Professor of English and given a lightened course load in order for her to carry out her own research. This would last for two school years, which is the timespan that Dana was hired for.

Now that two years has come to an end, and I think I speak for all of the Decaturian staff (and probably Dr. Meddaugh as well) when I say that she will be incredibly missed when she leaves the university at the end of the semester. She is an amazing person to work with, with an eye for detail and an immensely supportive attitude. Whatever we wanted to do as a student press - even when she warned us it might be detrimental - she fully supported us, and her dedication to the First Amendment is beyond commendable.

I’d like to think that I have an even deeper reason to miss her: she hired me, solely on the advice of Randy Brooks, and said, “You want to do this? Do it, and I’ll give you whatever you need to make it work.” That’s no hyperbole, either - when I told her that I couldn’t do anything dynamic with the programming languages available on university servers (which are Microsoft servers with ASP, a language I’d never worked with), she arranged to buy a domain and off-site hosting - with her own money, I might add - to use for developing The Dec Online. She fully supported the hiring of an assistant, Kerry, who has lightened my load in ways I can’t even express, and more recently, she helped find an online content manager, Ben, whose job would be entirely to create exclusive online content in additional to material printed in the regular Decaturian. She has been my adviser, and even though I adore Priscilla, Dana has had a special knack for understanding the issues of online media and giving sound advice for implementation of new features and services.

Most of all, I owe to her the momentum that The Dec Online has been able to achieve. If I said I did all of this work out of my own motivation, it would be a lie: I also did it because I knew that she believed in me, my abilities and my drive for more knowledge and success. It was because of her that The Dec Online got its start when she was a student; it is because of her that it was reborn anew with the same vitality that she brings to all of her work.

So, Dana, I tip my proverbial hat to you: you are a shining example of the sort of person that Millikin needs in its instructors, and your impact to journalism here will be felt for quite a while, as will your impact to the students and faculty you have worked with. Know that we all wish you the best in whatever you do beyond Millikin (although I think you might still be back, in time), and we will always think fondly of you.