Thursday, February 16, 2006
The EMB Restructure has been approved!
I am very happy to announce that the Communication faculty voted - unanimously, no less - to approve both a major change in the Radio/Television curriculum and a name change to Electronic Media and Broadcasting. We literally have been working on this since my first semester on campus, and the structure that was approved is version 8.5. It has been a long time coming.
The reason for changing the curriculum is simple - the structure that RTV has had over the past number of years was created in hopes of focusing the student's attention on an aspect of media. However, media has become more "cross-platform" and less segmentized as the business has moved away from a strictly broadcasting model and toward more "democratized" methods of creating and distributing aural and visual information. Additionally, the eight tracks that RTV had made for huge graduation and staffing headaches. All that is gone with the adoption of the new structure, which can be seen here. I am very happy about this change.
The name change reflects the lessening role that traditional broadcasting (RTV) has in the world of media production. While we still have a multi-camera aspect to our program, just as there are multi-camera aspects to the major news and sports outlets, much more media is being created by/for single-camera outlets. DVDs, independent films, internet distribution, iPod video - these are the distribution methods of today, and to call the program "Radio/Television" is incorrect today.
I'll post more in the coming days (the Dean search is NEARLY complete - more on that as I can release details) but as life comes back toward "normal" I'm going to enjoy just having the time to grade projects this weekend.
Oh, one more thing. Next Saturday (February 25) from 2:00 until 6:00 we're going to hold a Halo2 LAN 'party' in our classrooms in Landrum. I'll be the guy running around the virtual world with a big target on his back and not really knowing what he's doing. Actually, Wes and I will probably both be doing that. Anyway, if you have an Xbox and want to join in, contact me. If you don't have my info, you probably don't really want to play with us EMB folks anyway. :-)
CLS
The reason for changing the curriculum is simple - the structure that RTV has had over the past number of years was created in hopes of focusing the student's attention on an aspect of media. However, media has become more "cross-platform" and less segmentized as the business has moved away from a strictly broadcasting model and toward more "democratized" methods of creating and distributing aural and visual information. Additionally, the eight tracks that RTV had made for huge graduation and staffing headaches. All that is gone with the adoption of the new structure, which can be seen here. I am very happy about this change.
The name change reflects the lessening role that traditional broadcasting (RTV) has in the world of media production. While we still have a multi-camera aspect to our program, just as there are multi-camera aspects to the major news and sports outlets, much more media is being created by/for single-camera outlets. DVDs, independent films, internet distribution, iPod video - these are the distribution methods of today, and to call the program "Radio/Television" is incorrect today.
I'll post more in the coming days (the Dean search is NEARLY complete - more on that as I can release details) but as life comes back toward "normal" I'm going to enjoy just having the time to grade projects this weekend.
Oh, one more thing. Next Saturday (February 25) from 2:00 until 6:00 we're going to hold a Halo2 LAN 'party' in our classrooms in Landrum. I'll be the guy running around the virtual world with a big target on his back and not really knowing what he's doing. Actually, Wes and I will probably both be doing that. Anyway, if you have an Xbox and want to join in, contact me. If you don't have my info, you probably don't really want to play with us EMB folks anyway. :-)
CLS
