Today holds so much potential
What is The Media School and who do we aspire to be? Today we commence our formal strategic planning process with partner Mapt Solutions, a consulting firm based in Indianapolis. Mapt has extensive experience in the field of education and will help us identify opportunities and craft our path forward. The process will incorporate input from students, faculty, and staff, culminating in a roadmap for implementing a bold vision. Plus, Mapt’s engagement manager, Emily Nelson, is a proud Media School alumna (BAJ'12)!
Media industry excursions
Today also marks our first day back from spring break. Many of our students and faculty are returning today after a week of rest — incredibly necessary for everyone’s mental health and academic and professional success. Some of our students may not be feeling rested, but rather inspired — by their academic and co-curricular spring break trips to New York City and Tokyo. Students in our International Game Design Practices course, led by Senior Lecturer Rush Swope, spent the week touring Japanese game studios and pitching their game concepts to professionals. Our sophomore honors students, led by Professor James Shanahan and Associate Professor Minjeong Kang, networked and developed professional skills at New York City destinations including The New York Times, the Associated Press, the New York Film Academy, and MediaScience. Travel is a transformative part of a college education, and one of my top priorities is raising funds that will allow all our students to experience these programs.
I will be back on the road next week to meet members of our LA Council, most of them for the first time. The LA Council is an alumni volunteer group of entertainment industry professionals who provide connections, advice, and networks to Media School students. I look forward to getting to know you — thanks so much for your service to the school. hosting weekly screenings of films from the BFCA’s collections in the commons.
Spring events on the horizon
Back on campus, we have no shortage of upcoming events over the next month. One can’t-miss annual event is the In Light Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, a student-run program through our Center for Documentary Research and Practice that screens documentaries from around the world that tackle human rights issues. This year's festival is March 28-30 at various screening venues around Bloomington, and features compelling stories from the frontlines in Ukraine, the drought-besieged Turkana-Ngaremara community of northern Kenya, and the United States from the perspective of Muslim Americans, among others. Congratulations to graduate students Narmeen Ijaz and Khurram Sheikh for curating an exciting program.
Telling the difficult stories and protecting journalists’ mental health
Stories like these are often difficult to tell — storytellers must carefully consider why they are covering select stories and whether they could inflict trauma by asking people to recount difficult stories — and if so, is it worth it? And the experience of covering difficult stories can be traumatic for the storytellers themselves. This has been a theme of several recent conversations I’ve had — when I moderated the panel of alumni journalists at the Feb. 17 IU Alumni Association’s Weekend U in Washington, D.C., and at the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism’s Advisory Board meeting at the end of February. I was moved to hear about how extensive the trauma is, but also the techniques journalists use to process that trauma and the difficult decisions they make when deciding how to cover stories. I also heard about how The Washington Post and other papers are similarly foregrounding the mental health of journalists. It’s my desire to have The Media School lead in efforts to bring these issues to the forefront. Here’s to turning out students who we don’t just plug into our industries — whether journalism, filmmaking, game design, or advertising — but actually model what our industries can be: deep thinking, questioning, and keeping mental health of all front and center.
With so much to look forward to — embarking on our new strategic planning process, a calendar full of thought-provoking (and fun!) events, and a semester to finish out strong — today holds so much potential. Whether it’s the rest or inspiration you got out of spring break, or simply the freedom of saying goodbye to the darkness of winter, I wish you success in finding the motivation to make the most of it.
David Tolchinsky
Dean, The Media School at Indiana University
