David Berlo

David Kenneth Berlo (1929 – February 23, 1996) was an American communications theorist. He taught at Michigan State University and later served as president of Illinois State University.

Early life and career He was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and studied psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. While at the University of Illinois, he wrote a communications textbook titled The Process of Communication, which is still used today. Berlo was founding chairman of the Faculty of Communication at Michigan State University, serving from 1958 to 1971. Later, Wilbur Schramm introduced a model that identified multiple variables in communication which includes the transmitter, encoding, media, decoding, and receiver.

In Berlo's SMCR model, the sender is one who sends the message, the receiver receives the message, which is transmitted through the channel where disturbances might occur.

The components of Berlo's SMCR Model consist of the following: communication skills, attitude, knowledge, and social systems. In this model, the use of communication skills is applied to his theory for the source to communicate effectively he/she needs to have good communication skills. Communication skills should include listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It is important to know how to effectively communicate to apply this model. The use of attitude is put in place so that the source has the attitude to communicate effectively. The use of knowledge is important to know what is trying to be communicated so that the source knows to be knowledgeable about the information that it wants to send. Lastly, social systems are put in place so that communication takes place in a society where there are different people with different beliefs and values. The source needs to be aware of the culture, religion, beliefs, and values of the receiver.

An SMCR model can be applied in many different fields. A recent study discovered the correlation between English and Chinese students and their effective use of the English language. By using the SMCR model, aims to explore problems faced by English teachers in ‘role’ transformation from the traditional classroom to the flipped classroom, propose how they should transform their roles to improve the teaching quality and discuss this impact on traditional English classroom. This is an effective way that Berlo's SMCR model can be applied to a real-world scenario in communication studies.

Time at Illinois State University He assumed the presidency at Illinois State University in 1971. Berlo had high hopes for ISU, wanting it to become the premier undergraduate university in the state. One way Berlo did this was to have each academic department meet and decide where they could cut costs in order to reallocate funding. He died at the age of 66 on February 23, 1996, and was buried in the New Saint Marcus Cemetery and Mausoleum in Affton, Missouri.