Duane G. Straub papers

Duane Gene Straub was born on February 25, 1933, in Paullina, Iowa, to Melvin Carl and Birdline Amendt Straub. As a young man, Duane served with the United States Navy (1953 to 1957). He began his academic career at age 24 at Valparaiso University, and finished his undergraduate studies in 1961, when he earned a bachelor's degree in Distributed Studies (Television Production, English, Technical Journalism and Business Administration) from Iowa State University. In 1964 he earned a master's degree in Radio-Television-Film at Michigan State University, and he completed coursework in Human Relations, Marketing, Computer Science and Business Administration at Ohio University and Indiana University. Additionally, Straub attended the U.S. Navy Ground Controlled Approach Radar Technician School and the U.S. Navy Aviation Electronics Technician School, earning a Federal Communications Commission General Class Radio Telephone Engineer's License. On July 27, 1960, he married Sylvia Ann Clarke.

A variety of positions relating to the fields of broadcasting, television, and education characterize Straub's early career. He assumed his first professional position in 1963 at WOUB-TV, Ohio University, where he worked as Operations Manager/Lecturer. He supervised the production and operational activity of broadcast and closed circuit television, produced the weekly program "Bobcat Sports," and established and supervised procedures for the station's production operations.

In 1965 Straub became Associate Director of the Public Television Library, a division of the Public Broadcasting Service, at Indiana University. In addition to administering business operations and acquiring and distributing programming to over 250 national public television stations, Straub initiated and supervised the development and production of the "Artists in America" series, and acquired a library of over 3,000 programs, many of which remain in current distribution. Straub remained with the Public Television Library until January 1975, when he became a Project Operations Manager for the Audio-Visual Center at Indiana University. Some of his achievements during this period (1975 to 1981) include bringing over three million dollars in revenues to Indiana University, and managing a federal contract which nationally distributed educational media to the handicapped.

From 1981 to 1984 Straub worked as the Operations Manager for a Special Materials Project at the Captioned Film/Media Library in Indianapolis, IN and Silver Spring, MD. He researched and implemented a computerized client registration and media distribution system, planned and implemented the move of over eight thousand inventory lis from Indiana University to the Media Library in Indianapolis, and increased the client base forty-percent using strategic marketing techniques (eighty-five thousand films to nine thousand clients annually). In 1984 Straub became the Audiovisual Management Policy Officer for the Chief of Naval Operations at The Naval Imaging Management Division, Washington, D.C. In addition to serving as a policy authority and administrator for Navy AV production and services, library operations and records management and disposal, Straub functioned as the Navy's point of contact for video teleconferencing while assisting the development of Navy policy for interactive video.

Straub briefly (1988 to 1989) worked as the Head, Biomedical Communications Programs and Systems/CAMIS Department at the Naval Health Sciences Education and Training Command, Bethesda, Maryland, before assuming his current position there as the Director, Biomedical Communications Management, and Special Assistant for Audiovisual Services to the Chief, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Straub's major current tasks include overseeing the 1.5 million dollar educational and documentary audiovisual program for the entire U.S. Navy Medical Department and developing AV policy and procedures for all Navy medical activities, including approximately forty hospitals and technical training schools worldwide.

Straub currently resides with his wife in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is a member of Lambda Chi Alpha, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, the Federal Educational Technology Association, the International Interactive Communications Society, the Society of Broadcast Engineers and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.