Published in The Beacon on March 28, 2019.
On Tuesday, March 12, the Board of Higher Education voted to approve a new Bachelor of Arts in Communications at MCLA.
The decision creates a new major that will be offered within the English/Communications Department.
Paul LeSage, chairperson of the English/communications department, made it clear that the department is not splitting, but rather simply adding the new major. LeSage said the department will stay united as students get to pursue more classes that fall in line with their interests.
“This is an answer to many of the assessment reports that students put in semester after semester, over quite a few years,” LeSage said.
The new major is the culmination of ideas, plans and discussions that go back all the way to 2004, when Michael Birch, professor of English/communications, created a vision to expand communications offerings in 2004 as part of the college’s strategic plan.
Starting in the Spring 2016 semester, professors Birch, Joseph Ebiware and Shawn McIntosh held weekly informal meetings to discuss ideas about what a new communications major would look like.
They built on material that had been proposed by Birch and LeSage in years past, taking into account the latest developments in the field and, in the later stages of the discussions, LeSage joined the regular meetings to discuss the major’s direction.
“One of the nice things about the new major is that we primarily use existing classes but with different emphasis in certain areas that better align with the knowledge that students interested in communications need,” said McIntosh, who is also assistant professor of digital journalism and communications. “We’ve added two new classes, Media Writing & Production, and Communication Research & Methods, in order to fill important knowledge and skill gaps for English/communications students.”
With the major now approved, the department will work to get the major into the academic catalog so that students can begin studying under the new program.
Once the new major is officially a part of the catalog, students can officially declare it, and the department can look at who is eligible to switch over. The hope is that it will be as seamless as possible for current students to switch majors if they wish, according to McIntosh.
The new major also has a new concentration, Digital Media Innovation, and the existing concentrations of Journalism, Broadcasting, and Public Relations and Corporate Communications will move to the new major after final approval from the school’s governance committees. The film studies concentration will remain within the English major.
All the concentrations will also be offered as minors for students in any major, which will help students studying in other subject areas enhance their communications and media skills, said McIntosh.
The communications faculty had to consider many factors as they discussed the scope of the new major.
“There was a whole range of things that you had to look at,” Birch said. “A whole range of courses that brought together this idea of how media was converging, the way in which new technologies were going to impact culture and society, but more specifically it was important for students to become familiarized with those new skills.”
There was an $800,000 wish list as part of the plan that Birch had originally created.
Since then, Birch received a $50,000 grant for the AVID editing machines. He also received $200,000 to renew the TV studio from former President Mary Grant. Cindy Brown, former vice president of academic affairs, offered $350,000 to make the TV studio a digital operation. There will also be a $10,000 grant coming by this summer for new audio equipment as part of a Title III grant the school received.
A Title III grant comes from the federal government to help improve education infrastructure.
Despite the money received so far, Birch is hoping to obtain additional money to continue equipment upgrades and to make Mark Hopkins Hall a state-of-the-art media production facility.
“As we’ve got new faculty coming in, as we have new possibilities, I think there’s still room for other things to happen,” Birch said. “Part of the original plan was for animation to be part of a new media center.”
The new media center that Birch envisions will allow students to continue to emphasize the importance of converging media and learning skills to help them adapt to a changing media climate.
“It’s a new world now; very few people will have jobs that they stay in for a long, long period of time,” Birch continued. “Students will need to know how the economy changes, where their profession is going to change, and where they should look towards getting new jobs to feed not just them but their families.”
After departmental approval in the Fall 2017 semester, and getting approved through the school’s various governance committees and board of trustees in Spring 2018, the new major proposal was sent to the state’s Board of Higher Education for final approval.
On Tuesday, March 5, LeSage, McIntosh and Dean of Academic Operations Deborah Foss represented the College and went before the BHE’s Academic Affairs Committee.
Only one question, focused on internships available in rural western Massachusetts, was asked of the MCLA delegation. McIntosh answered, speaking of the opportunities available with local media outlets and opportunities for placement immediately following graduation.
During the deliberations, Commissioner of Higher Education Carlos Santiago credited MCLA with coming to the aid of Southern Vermont College and its affected students, which had just been announced the day before the meeting.
The communications major was approved unanimously by the Academic Affairs Committee, with one member commenting that it was the kind of interdisciplinary major that the committee would like to see more of. President Jaime Birge received a letter from the Department of Higher Education dated March 14, stating that the new major was approved at the BHE’s main meeting on March 12.
For Birch, the hard work has paid off.
“This is testament to the idea that if you have a plan in place, if you have an idea, and a sound idea as a fundamental foundation then it cannot be ignored,” Birch said.
