Yale Bulletin and Calendar

December 6-13, 1999

Volume 28, Number 15

CMI will boost faculty's use of new media

Provost also announces new funds for media and technology

Provost Alison F. Richard has announced the establishment of a media resource center to serve the University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and its professional schools.

The new Center for Media Initiatives (CMI) will provide intensive support for three to five innovative faculty projects a year. It also will include a Faculty Media Laboratory that all faculty will be able to use, two new media specialists who will serve as staff and funds for new internal, peer-reviewed media innovation grants.

"I am very excited about this new venture," Richard said. "The CMI will encourage faculty to experiment with information technology and support them in their efforts. That will enhance teaching and learning both on the Yale campus and outside the University."

The CMI will be part of a lively and growing engagement with the use of electronic media for teaching, learning and research at Yale. Other Yale entities that are exploring the new media include the School of Medicine's Information Technologic Services-Medical Web Design + Development (which includes the former Center for Advanced Media Instruction), the Center for Language Study and the Digital Media Center for the Arts.

Philip Long, Yale's director of Academic Media & Technology (AM&T), will serve as CMI's interim director. He also will chair a new standing Academic Media Coordinating Committee that will include the heads of Yale's major academic media units and that will encourage dialogue among those units and disseminate innovations developed in the individual units to the rest of the University. AM&T and the University Library already assist FAS faculty in the use of electronic media and image and text databases in classrooms and through course websites.

"The CMI aspires to be a 'platform for innovation,' a partner on a small number of faculty projects each year that will push the media or technology boundaries at Yale," Long said. "Along with the other media centers, CMI will also work through the Coordinating Committee to share ideas and disseminate successful innovations and models as widely as possible."

Under the CMI's auspices, initial projects already under development include a distance learning project in collaboration with the Association of Yale Alumni, technology-enhanced language teaching and learning experiments with the Center for Language Study, and an application to a foundation to support course redesign.

The CMI is an outgrowth of recommendations by the 1997-98 University Committee on Information Technology (UCIT), chaired by Edward S. Cooke, Jr., the Charles F. Montgomery Professor of the History of Art, which focused primarily on "Yale outside the walls." The Cooke Committee explored how to use powerful information technologies not only to enhance Yale's regular curriculum but also to explore the delivery of courses and other scholarly resources to alumni and other external audiences.

A second committee, chaired by Diana E. E. Kleiner, deputy provost for the arts and the Dunham Professor of Classics and History of Art, was charged in January 1999 with creating the new center and thinking about how to encourage and guide faculty and others to experiment with the application of the new interactive modes of instruction and communication with audiences at and outside Yale.

The Kleiner Committee -- the Committee on the Center for Media Initiatives (CCMI) -- recommended that these new efforts be coordinated with ongoing activities in AM&T and set guidelines and priorities for projects that the CMI would undertake.

"I was delighted to spearhead the effort that led to the creation of this new center," Kleiner said. "I am confident that the Yale faculty will generate innovative projects at the CMI and that these will have a profound impact on Yale's core educational mission."

"The next wave of media technologies will see every university getting into the game, figuring out how to bring their unique strengths to bear," said Paul Bracken, professor at the Yale School of Management and in the political science department, who was a member of the Kleiner Committee. "CMI will play a pivotal role in helping Yale to shape the technologies to our strengths rather than having the technologies shape our programs."

The committee also made budget and operating recommendations for a new associated video production studio for both academic and non-academic uses. Now in operation at Media Services at 59 High St., the studio is primarily designed to enable Yale's world-renowned faculty and leaders to appear on television without leaving the campus; it is linked to TV and radio networks and stations around the country and the world.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Divinity School gets $6 million grant

CMI will boost faculty's use of new media

'Accelerated life' suits Yale's youngest star

From the University Provost

Endowed Professorships

Gifts support use of new technologies in teaching and learning

Yale SOM experts take to the airwaves

Actors must connect with their characters, says Pacino

Interior Secretary to discuss environmental ethics

Ralph Reed to give lecture at Law School

Scientists' characterization of yeast gene may yield clues about how human cells work

Keith Wilson earns high honors for his musical contributions

Drama takes audience on metaphysical train ride

Doctor helps design Disney exhibit on high-tech world of radiology

Yale-related renovation projects win design awards

Researcher wins competitive McKnight Investigator Award

Duke's Men to perform in the 'Do Downtown' lunchtime series

Holiday Toys for Kids drive

Modest measures advised in preparation for Y2K

Hawkshaw speaks at conference on Bruckner

. . In the News . . .