Summer job opportunities of all kinds!

Tweet

Want a kickin' summer job?! EMC summer job opportunities now listed.  We're looking to fill many various positions: 

• marketing and communications
• video
• writing
• programming
• graphic design
• interactive design
• art

Apply early! You must be a Champlain College student to apply.

Connecting with the Community

Tweet

Just the other week, I received the first Twitter “retweet” that was a milestone for me as a student and upcoming professional. As a first year MFA student at Champlain College, I’ve learned lessons both from lecture as well as classroom discussion with my instructors and peers. I initially enrolled in the program with a background in communication theory and hobbies of audio production and musical composition. Bringing these interests to the Emergent Media courses and classroom discussions have revealed ways to refine and expand my skills while developing a professional outlook for future opportunities and success.

Without further adieu, let me explain what exactly happened in the previously mentioned Twitter experience. The retweet came from Vermont Public Radio (VPR), sharing a link to my work with their nearly 5,000 followers. Beyond just feeling great having my work noticed by such a reputable organization, it taught me an important lesson about applying my education and professional skills to connect with society.

Making an animated sketch about VPR was not conceived with any particular goal in mind, nor it was it approached from one particular angle or focus. It was born from a combination of digital material and software skills I’m accruing as an MFA in Emergent Media student. Appropriately, one could even say the piece, as a whole, emerged. Allow me to elaborate.

As I was driving from Erik Esckilsen’s Digital Story Telling class, VPR was in the midst of their membership drive—a semi-annual fundraiser. By the time I arrived home, I already had a concept that could incorporate several original songs and illustrations on my hard drive, and a rudimentary understanding of Adobe After Effects. I put together a quick animation on the concept of the “hero’s journey,” which the MFA class had been discussing. At the outset, I had no goals in mind beyond strengthening my proficiency with certain software, and to express, humorously I hoped, a digital story related to VPR’s membership drive.

When I’d completed the video I shared a link via Twitter. I mentioned VPR (@vprnet) because it was relevant to the organization. I never anticipated a retweet, let alone a “follow” from either VPR or Brendan Kinney (VP of Development and Marketing for VPR), but this became the reality. In the end, I learned something much more important than how to use software proficiently. The experience taught me the powerful pull of applying emergent media to everyday society, and in particular its communicative impact for local organizations and communities.

Please view the sketch here: davestiller.com/vprDrive2.mp4.

Champlain College in Top 10 game design colleges in the country!

Tweet

Hot off the press! Here's the article from the NY Times announcing The Princeton Review & Game Pro magazine's "Top Places to Study Video Game Design - For Credit." Written by Jacques Steinberg. Source article can be found here. Champlain Game Dev students - head on over to the comments on the NYT blog and let them know what you think!

------

March 1, 2011, 2:18 PM

The Top Places to Study Video Game Design — For Credit

By JACQUES STEINBERG

Are you a high school student who dreams of inventing the next Wii or Kinect sensation, or the next “Call of Duty”?

For the second year in a row, Princeton Review and GamePro Media, the publisher of GamePro magazine, a video-gamers’ bible, have joined forces to handicap what they consider the “Top 10” undergraduate and graduate programs in video game design.

For readers of The Choice who may have logged so much time on the X-Box that they have actually contemplated a career in this (virtual) world, a list like this is probably most valuable as a vehicle for brainstorming the names of universities that actually permit students to study such things. (And yes, I would count myself among those whose first response might well be, “Who knew?”)

Which undergraduate institutions made the list?

1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles
2. University of Utah, Salt Lake City
3. DigiPen Institute of Technology, Redmond, Wash.
4. The Art Institute of Vancouver, Vancouver, B.C.
5. Michigan State University, East Lansing
6. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass.
7. Drexel University, Philadelphia
8. Champlain College, Burlington, Vt.
9. Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y.
10. Becker College, Worcester, Mass.

Princeton Review and GamePro said they had made their selections based on the results of surveys of administrators at 150 colleges and universities that offer video game design courses (and in some cases degrees). They also bestowed “honorable mention” status on five other undergraduate institutions: Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta); North Carolina State (Raleigh): Rensselaer Polytechnic Institution (Troy, N.Y.); Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, Ga.); and Shawnee State University (Portsmouth, Ohio).

The full list, including that of the graduate schools, will be in the April issue of GamePro magazine, due on newsstands March 8.

Do readers of The Choice, particularly those of you who are video game players or who are studying in these programs, have any wisdom of your own to impart here? Please use the comment box below to let us know.