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By Lanita Withers Goins, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-3890
Posted 5-14-09
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Starting July 1, the Department of Broadcasting and Cinema will have a new name: the Department of Media Studies.
The change, unanimously approved by department faculty, reflects paradigm shifts that have occurred in the discipline in recent years, said Dr. David A. Cook, head of the department. It also signals a larger initiative to change the direction and curriculum of the department to better suit a 21st century audience.
“The curriculum basically hadn’t changed since 1975,” Cook said, dating back to when the university’s first program in the field was created.
But the world around it has changed significantly.
“What we have had since 1975 is the arrival of the internet, laptop computers, PDAs, cell phones, iPods and iPhones,” he said. “In 1975, cable networks were just in the process of cranking up. All these new media forms have converged. People can download movies and TV shows and watch them on their cell phones. They can share photographs and streaming video with their peers. These sources of information are competing with each other and all the other electronic demands on our attention.
“At our retreat last August, the department authorized the revision of our curriculum to address a paradox: that we teach the most attractive and relevant subject matter in the College (of Arts and Sciences) – media, old and new, at a time when media increasingly shapes the structure of everyday life – but we have the second lowest enrollments.”
The new curriculum, expected to be completed by the fall of 2010, has 16 new or amended courses designed to teach students how to creatively produce and critically analyze media. The core curriculum for all majors has been updated, and concentrations will be eliminated in favor of allowing students to craft their own areas of specialization.
“These are big, big changes,” Cook said. “We threw out half of the curriculum and updated the half we left in.”
The department’s MFA program will also have a new emphasis in documentary production, drawing on the strength of distinguished, award-winning faculty members Matt Barr, Michael Frierson and Brett Ingram.
The goal of the changes is to better serve the department’s nearly 200 undergraduate students and 20 master’s candidates for the environments they’re going to face when they leave the university, Cook said.
“I saw someone watching ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on a cell phone the other day. That’s the world that we live in and that we have to educate our students to understand.”