Alumni Spotlight: Dale Munhall

During my semi-professional-student period from 1967-1973, I was a writing major in the original Omaha-U Carriage House gang. Before that I had started studying architecture in Lincoln, and after duty in the Marine Corps, I did eventually return to the technical world and become a licensed architect and construction manager—but only after a very fulfilling adventure via education in the Arts and Sciences. I’m eternally grateful that my adviser, Dr. Bruce Baker, signed blank course schedule forms every semester and let me fill in whatever random “-ology” and literature classes appealed to me. Yes, we had to get permission forms before standing in long registration lines to pull physical cards for classes back then. But, I have never regretted one minute of that detour years spent exploring the Humanities while getting an incredibly well-rounded education at Omaha University, now known as UNO. I am a living testimonial to the value of first learning HOW to think, and then being able to focus on technical things worth thinking ABOUT.

I can't claim this circuitous quest for Enlightenment was a grand plan on my part, though. When my Poetry instructor, the imposing Zeus-like Richard McClellan, discovered that I was vacillating between writing and architecture, anyone who knew him can imagine how ‘colorfully’ he encouraged me to abandon physics and structures classes and instead follow the yellow brick road leading deeper into the English Department. And, after being further inspired by Oz’s other resident instructors John McKenna, Bruce Baker, Ralph Wardle, Marjorie Turner, Dick Duggan, Gene Russell and Tom Walsh, I was very, very glad that I had followed the Wizard's advice and taken the long route back to Kansas.

Over the years, I have discovered that the gulf I perceived between writing and architecture turned out to have been greatly exaggerated. In reality, as the practice of architecture has become more computerized, its success has become more reliant on written and personal communication. When I entered the profession, it was unethical to advertise or even promote professional services. And, every professional had a secretary to "clean up" written correspondence, so proficiency in English was actually scorned. Since then, though, everything has changed. As a registered architect in today's world, my original pencil-drafting skills may have become obsolete, but professional success has come to depend more heavily on writing skills for proposals, presentations, essays in professional journals, committee reports, technical and contractual documents, project management correspondence and a wide variety of communications among design and construction teams. And the importance, complexity and pace of communications are constantly accelerating in virtually every other occupation as well.

There are very few days when I don't still think of my time in the Department of English, with Marjorie Turner's slashing red pen whittling away at the non-essential fluff in my expository writing. No one any longer has a secretary, and it certainly shows. Sadly, semi-literate executives have become the rule, not the exception. I was, therefore, delighted when I learned that the UNO English Department was getting good response to new certificate programs in written communication. I encourage you to keep up such course offerings and to expand and promote them shamelessly--someone has to do something to increase literacy in the face of bland technology and stem the rising tide of incoherent email in the business world.

--Dale L. Munhall, AIA, NCARB