The idea behind the founding of Banja Luka College of Communications Kappa Phi was rather quixotic.

Communication, its abuse, and lack of it, can be used to explain so many things that occurred in Yugoslavia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, before, during and after the last war. Higher education, as much as everything else in this country after the war, was corrupted – just a quirky shadow of the one we had before the war. In terms of allocation of its resources to education the system was also quite whimsical.

That's why a group of people tried to establish something probably equally meager, but at least different and clean – this school.

The idea of studying communication here is relatively novel and, many argue, somewhat hazy. I do not think, of course, that it has to be hazy. First of all, the healing potential of communication has been recognized and used in conflict resolution and reconciliation both in research and in real life. Its interdisciplinary character can also be helpful in attaining a clearer and more complete picture of social reality. Finally, studying communication is simply a most practical choice for future journalists, publicists, designers, analysts, consultants, politicians and managers.

In our current program, we stress the study and attainment of practical skills such as writing, speaking, computing and production; we introduce students to the crafts of the field (journalism, advertising, public relations, design) and we highlight various social and cultural issues via different theory courses. Our curriculum also includes courses in literature, psychology, and anthropology.

What we have wanted most to have in this school is small classes and dialogue as the main method of instruction. I want to believe that education is comprised of facing the problems of reality – both in school and in the real world, of the dialogue at school about those problems, and of honest individual work on solving those problems. For this we have thought it important to stress the establishment of a community of equal participants, regardless of scholarly rank or status in school. True dialogue is possible only among the equals, is our motto of sorts. So, pedagogically speaking, that is the philosophy that we concentrate most of our energy in creating and implementing (implementation has been quite a fashionable word in Bosnia in recent years).

In our communication program students are exposed to different schools of thought so they are able to seek their own paradigm. In other words, in our theoretical paradigm we do not endorse any school or any tradition in particular – all are welcome, as long as they are not dominant. Depending on people who teach here the program has evolved in several directions, such as communication studies, communication arts, and language.

In my own education, aside from my family, I owe everything to a few exceptional people, ideas and places. I was so lucky to grow up in a charming small town created and cherished by a real Mitteleuropa. At the time I was growing up, Teslić had both form and content, style and passion. It was also there, in my high school, where I had several great teachers. One of them was my history teacher, Dušan Knežević: an extraordinary person, in many ways. His brilliance was in making us question historical events – their context, meaning, causes, connectedness and consequences. He ridiculed the idea that history was a chronology of events, persons and figures. If only this country had had only one Dušan Knežević in every high school we would not have had the war. But it did not and we did.

In college I was lucky to study at one of the best English departments in the country, which lead me, not only to learning English, but, incidentally, also to come to one of the greatest schools in the world.

I remember a student from Farmington Hills somewhat sneeringly asking me why I was at a graduate program at Grand Valley, why I was not at some of America’s “great” schools? Why, I said, this is a great school. My answer probably did not match her News and World Report point of view. I had no quantitative benchmark to explain the greatness I saw in Grand Valley State University, although its excellent facilities, as well as the integrity, hard work and kindness of west Michigan’s people compare to the best. The academic greatness of Grand Valley, I told her, was in its torch bearers, my professors, who did their job so passionately. One of them made you want both to question and love communication the whole of your life. I learned almost everything about communication field from Alex Nesterenko, and everything about what a great communication teacher is. The other, late professor Barry Castro, made you question and love life. He was the kind of teacher Neil Postman dreamed of. Discontented with what I saw as failures of democracy and humanity, I once asked Barry what the point was in doing anything meaningful. His answer was that we had to keep the fire burning. And now, if you happen to visit Grand Valley, you will see that many people there definitely keep the fire burning.

Banja Luka College of Communications Kappa Phi is, among other things, inspired by people such as Dušan, Alex and Barry. The vision and hard work of our staff, faculty and students make it happen. And we are also about communication and keeping the fire burning.