Center for Creative & Applied Media
Evergreen has been a destination for media students since the college opened in 1971 – it still is.
Students continue to come to Evergreen because of its reputation for media studies. In a recent survey, 28 percent of new first-year and transfer students reported plans to focus in media or closely-related studies.
With each passing day, the content of human knowledge increases and the means of delivering it perpetuate at a dizzying pace.
From printed words to Podcasts, .pdf files to streaming information feeds, newspapers, talk radio, cable news and blogospheres — the average person in the developed world today has a growing number of sources of information. As today’s colleges and universities strive to prepare literate graduates ready to engage a complicated world, the definition of literacy has necessarily broadened to include media literacy — the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate information in today's expanding universe of media choices.
VISION – CCAM
The Evergreen State College is nationally recognized for excellent, hands-on academic programs in interdisciplinary media studies.
We provide students a rigorous expertise and entrée to a variety of graduate school or employment opportunities in media fields.
All Evergreen students are media literate by graduation.
They are critical thinkers about the source and content of the media environment and are creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language, and sound.
The teaching and learning experience across Evergreen’s curriculum has greater depth, breadth, immediacy and relevance by the employment of media technology.
New and expanding access to information and supporting the broad dissemination and broadcast of new and important work.
The Evergreen community — students, faculty, staff, administrators, campuses, remote program centers, alumni, supporters — are knit more closely together through improved communications capabilities.
New technologies offer rich exchanges from around the globe for presenting academic work, engaging in scholarly discussions, conducting college business, and sharing best practices.
Decisions affecting the future of media at the college rise from ongoing evaluation, careful analysis, and collaborative thinking by a wide range of campus stakeholders.
This includes faculty from all planning areas, media and technology staff, and administrators. Media investments result in better integration and strengthening of the college’s overall media infrastructure.
Evergreen’s learning community model continues to inspire national attention and praise.
The Center for Creative & Applied Media allows faculty, staff and students to continually expand our pedagogical experiment in new areas, most notably in the arena of virtual learning communities. Using new web-based and interactive technologies we are engaged in the next step of interactive teaching: virtual seminars with real-time interactivity and co-learners from across our campuses and around the world.
Media education has been and remains a critical component of an Evergreen education.
Whether our graduates choose to participate fully in or challenge our media-driven culture, they need to be prepared to obtain information, analyze its content, assess its veracity within the world they live, and to make informed choices. Media is no longer a boutique field of studies; it is a fundamental area of knowledge for students in all disciplines. The six expectations of an Evergreen graduate are a tall order, and if our students don’t encompass media literacy in the twenty-first century, it will not be possible for them to meet those expectations.
Few colleges and universities can match Evergreen’s commitment — through its teaching and learning values and its expectations of its graduates — to preparing students for the complexity twenty-first century life.
The establishment of the Center for Creative & Applied Media — to house Media Control (currently Master Control) and the new Media Studio — is critical for Evergreen to preserve media access and education in the current technologically fluid environment.
The Center’s design calls for an up-to-date facility for teaching media content and supporting the media needs of faculty in all disciplines.
As the College’s media hub, the Center will provide functional studio space for production, teleconferencing, broadcast across the college’s audio-visual and computer networks, and preservation of a burgeoning collection of media files (audio, video, film, etc.) in formats that are accessible in today’s technological environment.
Creation of the Center for Creative & Applied Media will benefit Evergreen in many areas:
- Improved opportunities for students in media studies programs;
- Digital conversion, editing, and storage of media documents;
- Increased media access for all students and faculty, promoting media literacy for all students;
- Teleconferencing to support the academic and administrative work of the college; and
- Theory and practice in the pedagogical area of Virtual Learning Communities.
- Teleconferencing to support the academic and administrative work of the college; and
- Theory and practice in the pedagogical area of Virtual Learning Communities.
