Introduction

It is by now axiomatic that most of our information about everything from people and places to pressing social issues and the diversity of world cultures comes to us from the audio, video, print, film, and computer-based sources collectively referred to as the mass media, rather than through direct experience. As these media and information technologies converge, fewer and fewer transnational media and technology companies play an ever more crucial role in shaping everyday life for millions of people. At the same time, these very technologies hold out the promise of incredible decentralization and democratization of communication. Just as a critical analysis of the global media/technology system as well as strategies for meaningful access are essential to maintaining an active and informed public, there is a need to develop a community-based telecommunications infrastructure and new community organizations and institutions that can empower people to become not just educated consumers, but trained producers, equipped with the knowledge and skills to tell their own stories. Sophisticated media and information technologies are no longer simply the province of giant corporations. Particularly as these technologies become more affordable and accessible, they have become useful, if not indispensable, tools for even the smallest non-profits and community-based organizations, to be utilized in the service of organizational development, community building, constituent mobilization, influencing public opinion, and other social goals. Yet, while the skilled use of these tools requires a considerable educational investment, there exists no university program in Massachusetts specifically designed to address such educational needs. The increasing relevance of media and information technologies to public and community service has led the College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston to develop this proposal for a new BA degree program in Community Media and Technology.

Need

The material for this proposal was gathered from existing market research, individual interviews with professionals from labor, community media and technology, and higher education, and two focus groups: one involving community-based media and technology professionals; the other, media professionals from the labor movement. The data indicate that a program in Community Media and Technology would attract significant outside resources and generate considerable student demand, both among students who would see themselves as community media and technology specialists, as well as among those who would employ media and technology skills in other public and community service professions such as community planning, youth work, or labor studies.

Career-related market research shows the service sector to be among the fastest-growing sectors of the economy and the field of telecommunications is projected to create 195,000 new jobs in the greater Boston area by 2015. There is significant evidence that the intersection of telecommunications and public and community service will be particularly dynamic in the near term. The Community Media and Technology movement has become a full-fledged social movement as evidenced by the vitality of such organizations as the Alliance for Community Media (ACM, http://www.alliancecm.org) and the Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet, http://www.ctcnet.org). A ten year old support project and membership organization, CTCNet currently boasts a membership of nearly 500 community-based technology centers nationally, 100 in the greater Boston area alone. (It is estimated that there are 8,000 - 10,000 such centers across the country.) In 1998, according to then network director of CTCNet Peter Miller, 17 fully funded staff positions for centers in the Boston area remained unfilled. The reason: the lack of qualified people and available training to produce a well-trained pool of applicants.

At a Fall 1998 Media Roundtable, some 200 participants reported to Charlotte Ryan of the Media Research and Action Project that they were currently using media/technology related skills in their work and that such skills were becoming a more important part of their jobs, even though very few of them had such duties built into their job descriptions and fewer still had received any formal training. Reinforcing this trend, Sarah Nathan, media specialist for the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, notes that the IBEW and SEIU locals 285 and 509 contract with communications firms to help develop their media strategies. The Painters District Council #35 employs a full-time media relations professional. Accordingly, at its October 1999 convention, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO established a standing Communications/Public Relations Committee, whose charge includes overseeing union education in the areas of information technology, communications, and media strategies. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO has since initiated a series of media training workshops for union members. Neither is this trend limited to labor. A community-based organization as small as the Irish Immigration Center employs a full-time media director. Clearly, there is a need for a program in Community Media and Technology.

The Proposed Program

CPCS is a competency-based academic unit, which, for the past three years, has been undergoing a significant curriculum revision, designed to keep the college on the cutting edge of new developments in public and community service. This proposal for a new degree program in Community Media and Technology is one of the outcomes of this effort. Related to the new major, the general education requirements in the new CPCS "Core Knowledge and Skills" area include a competency in Media Literacy as well as a three competency Communication and Computer Portfolio.

The competencies that would comprise the proposed major include:

• History of the Mass Communication (Discuss the invention and development of the major mass communication technologies and describe their corporate structure and ownership patterns with a special emphasis on how they affect content and cultural development.)
• Accessing Media and Technology (Discuss the relevant legislation, regulatory guidelines, and rules of access regarding mass media and communication technologies with a particular emphasis on community responsibility, public and community access, the development of community-based alternative media and communication technologies, and successful challenges to non-responsive broadcast licenses.)
• Bias in the Media (Discuss media policy regarding definitions of newsworthiness, reliance on experts, use of statistics, and image selection, as they affect broad patterns of inclusion/exclusion and the ideological limits of debate.)
• Analyzing Media (Demonstrate a systematic knowledge of the workings of a selected range of media and communication technologies and critically analyze how they shape perceptions of social issues, public policies, and cultural groups.)
• Media and Community Building (Compare and contrast a range of existing models and best practices in the use of media and communication technologies as tools for education and organizing, and can discuss the application of such uses to local projects and/or organizations.)
• Using Technology – Choose 2 technical training/internship (Demonstrate technical proficiency in a particular communications medium or technology and can apply those skills to a project related to public and community service.)
• Using Technology - Audio Production
• Using Technology - Video Production
• Using Technology - Photography
• Using Technology - Desktop Publishing/Web Design
• Using Technology - Internet Communication
• Using Technology - Basic Networking
• Using Technology - Database Management
• Writing for Multimedia (Demonstrate the ability to write leaflets, press releases, letters to the editor, news stories, and/or curriculum packages, instruction manuals, and other technical documents related to public and community issues and groups.)
• Developing a Media/Technology Strategy (Identify and research a relevant public or community issue, organizational need, or social goal, describe its fit with larger organizing goals and strategies, and design an effective media/technology project to build capacity, mobilize a constituency, or influence key stakeholders on the issue.)
• Implementing a Media/Technology Strategy (For a particular community issue, organizational need, or social goal, implement an effective media/technology project, and reflect on the effectiveness of the effort.)

As with other majors in the new CPCS curriculum, students in Community Media and Technology would have the option of completing the ten competency major outlined above, or combining it with a related Concentration in an area such as Management, Organizing, or Training and Development.

Resources

Within CPCS, Phil Hart, David Rubin, and Reebee Garofalo among the full-time faculty, and Carla Johnston and Paul Deare among our bargaining unit part-timers have done work in this area, and it is an area of particular interest to the Labor Resource Center. There is also the prospect of involving some of our language and computer faculty in developing instructional activities in the writing and computer areas. The CPCS Gerontology program has used the technology to offer distance learning courses with Paul Nathanson from the University of New Mexico, who has expressed considerable interest in the proposed program. The CPCS Policy Board has endorsed the proposed major as a top priority for hiring additional faculty resources.

Beyond CPCS, we have explored collaborative relationships with CAS Dean Neal Bruss, Mark Schlesinger and Ron Polito of the Communication and Theater Arts Program, John Brereton, who teaches professional and technical writing in the English Department, videographer Margaret Wagner of the Art Department, and Sara Baron and the staff of the Instructional Technology Center. Together, we have explored all types of collaboration, ranging from simple cross-registrations to a full-fledged intercollegiate program. Mark Schlesinger, in particular, has expressed strong support for the program and, with the assent of Dean Bruss, will begin teaching our Analyzing Media competency in Fall 2001. The staff of the Instructional Technology Center has put forward an internship model, in which a certain number of slots would be reserved for students in the program. These students would receive specialized training in one or more competency areas and be eligible to participate in all ITC workshops. In discussions with Tom Shaker, then Director of the Graduate Program in Instructional Design, we were struck by the degree to which our respective programs would be substantively compatible and agreed to explore the prospect of institutionalizing a curricular pathway from the proposed undergraduate major to the existing graduate program in Instructional Design. Finally, we have met with Dick Eckhouse of the Computer Science Department to explore ways in which the proposed major would complement the Information Technology across-the-campus initiative that he is promoting and with Jacqueline Moloney and Mary Grant of UMass Online to discuss distance learning possibilities.

In addition to exploring the above UMB resources, we have established collaborative relationships with the Cambridge-based national office of the Community Technology Centers Network and the Northeast regional leadership of the Alliance for Community Media, as well as local affiliates of these organizations (in Roxbury, Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, Malden, Lowell, and Cape Cod) regarding hands-on media and technology training and/or student internship placements. ACM and CTCNet members are particularly attracted to our College-Agency Agreement model, in which a consortium of these local organizations would provide qualified staff to teach in the Community Media and Technology program and/or student internship sites which address program competencies. In return these agencies would receive tuition waivers for some of their staff or constituents to enter the program as fully matriculated students. We have had similar discussions with Sarah Nathan of Massachusetts AFL-CIO regarding their media training program. Conversations with Pat Monteith of WUMB-FM and Steve Provizer of the Citizens Media Corps, indicate that they would be willing to provide training and/or internships in audio production.

Throughout this period, the college has positioned itself as an active participant in the media and technology community. CPCS has constructed its own state-of-the-art computer learning center to provide for faculty, staff, and student development. We have instituted an innovative system of online registration and evaluation for all CPCS competencies which has enhanced curriculum planning, student advising, consistency of evaluation, and graduate certification. We have initiated college-wide electronic lists and dedicated discussion groups and have developed an increasingly sophisticated interactive website (http://www.cpcs.umb.edu). In addition the college has co-sponsored a number of conferences and projects, including the Northeast Region Alliance for Community Media Conference: Access 2000: Community Arts, Media and Technology (March 17-18, 2000), which drew over 200 media/technology activists and professionals to the campus.

In August 2000, CPCS partnered with CTCNet to received a $1,000,000 grant from the Corporation for National Service for the CTC VISTA Project (http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista). The project provides for recruitment, training support, administrative coordination, and financial oversight for AmeriCorps*VISTA members in community technology centers in the greater Boston area and across the nation. Participating VISTAs receive ongoing mentoring at their home sites and attend a periodic training and orientation institute at CPCS. This is the first award in VISTA's Digital Divide initiative, and is seen as a national demonstration project. As such, the project has a substantive relationship with the proposed Community Media and Technology major.

Approvals

The original proposal for this program was presented to Chancellor Sherry Penney and Provost Charles Cnudde in the Fall of 1999. Both expressed interest in such a program and agreed that it would be an attractive offering at UMB. Since that time, we have met with dozens of individuals and organizations both within and outside the university to assess the staff needs for the proposed program, to explore opportunities for collaboration, to position CPCS advantageously with respect to media and technology resources, and to mobilize support for the program. To date we have received nothing but encouragement from those we have consulted.

The proposed Community Media and Technology program has been endorsed by CPCS governance and enjoys the strong support of CPCS Dean Ismael Ramírez-Soto. We look forward to the continued support of the Campus administration and a decision by the UMass Board of Trustees (in consultation with the Board of Higher Education) that would permit us to develop a Final Application.

©2004 College of Public and Community Service	CPCS Home | Site Map | Feedback | UMass Boston
College of Public and Community Service University of Massachusetts Boston 100 Morrissey Boulevard Boston, MA 02125-3383