Academic Plan 2011-2015 (PDF 524kB) - SUNY Empire State College

SUNY Empire State College: Academic Plan 2011 - 2015 45Communication, Media and The ArtsDescription and ScopeCommunication, Media and The Arts, broadly understood, explores the role of the arts and media inhelping human beings understand and communicate their lived experiences. Drawing largely on theliberal arts, fine arts and humanities traditions of the college – as well as encompassing other areas,including the human and natural sciences and business – this theme allows students to explore howhuman beings experience media and the arts, and how changes in media and the arts create new formsof communication processes between individuals, groups and societies.At the same time, this theme takes seriously the college’s mission and core value that students shouldlearn about and understand their communities through studying the culture that is produced anddisseminated by their immediate environments. Themes that draw on communication and culture,therefore, allow students to make sense of their lived experiences, and, at the same time, help translateand enrich those experiences for others in their communities.While promoting an understanding of their civic duty and their place in the global community, thistheme also supports the college’s strategic plan to foster student engagement in research that is globalin its scope, as a way to honor our commitment to be concerned and involved world citizens. Studentswho pursue this theme might, therefore, study such problems as the ways in which globalization hashad an impact on ethnic and cultural minorities; how the media communicates the challenges posedby globalization; what the influence of cultural products from the first world is on the third world,and so on.Another direction of the college, and articulated in the SUNY strategic plan, is to engage students inonline learning opportunities to help establish a link between SUNY and international programs. Thisreflects Empire State College’s unique model of open learning and its capacity to eliminate the barriersof time and space through delivering learning in an online environment. This theme could be deployedeffectively in the service of this objective, both in terms of exploring the theoretical and practical issuesinvolved in designing online learning environments, as well as in thinking about the ways in which thenew media technologies have created a different social landscape for learning at the college level.Students have been able to draw on the rich array of faculty expertise that already exists in the collegein such distinct areas as the arts, the humanities and social sciences – as well as more professional fieldssuch as journalism and business – to pursue concentrations that fall within the scope of this theme. Forexample, the college has ample faculty in such areas as creative writing and poetry, ethnomusicologyand music business arts management, as well as such areas as stage movement and theatre, includingacting, directing and theatre tech. There also are faculty who have worked with students in oralhistory, documentary photography and fine arts photography. The college possesses, finally, uniqueresources in understanding the psychodynamic, social justice and rehabilitative uses of theatre, visualart practices and performance.In addition to the college’s strengths in the arts, we also have faculty who have expertise in thetraditional humanities – including philosophy and literature, as well as the social sciences, includingpsychology and sociology, to more professional fields such as communications or journalism. Studentshave been able to pursue concentrations that draw on this theme, finally, in more interdisciplinaryareas such as American studies, ethnicity and global studies. The theme of communication, media and