Month: April 2009

I had such a good week I wrote two openings and just could not pick one…
The frantic exam week and why did I ever think that it was a good idea to give out so many projects that all have to have marked by Monday edition of the week 14 Confessions e-mail.

Or:
The Carr’s are moving, almost packed, shrink-wrapped and bubble packed, “oh my god where did we get so much stuff” week 14 edition of the confessions email.

Potluck
I understand that this is a big undertaking, and I may be just a little crazy for thinking I could do it all myself, but I think it would be a lot of fun to take a couple of minutes out of your promo meetings and dig into some fantastic home made grub in the form of a pot luck. The signup sheet is in the SCA lunchroom (S2080B) and we have 4 or 5 names on it to this point, but I think we can do MUCH better. If you are able to contribute and as such take part in the event on either Tuesday or Wednesday, please sign up today or send me an e-mail with your contribution.

Jed Reception
It was great to see so many out on Thursday afternoon for Jed’s end of semester “take a breath” reception. Not only attended by a great number of faculty and staff, it was very nice to see Mark Jones back in the building. It was also great to meet Mark Ingram, the coordinator of the new SCA Acting program and it was especially nice to see our new president, Dave Agnew.

Thanks also to Jed for presenting me with a gift, and his kind words. The thank you speech that I wished I had given goes something like this “Thank you Jed and Mark for giving me the opportunity to see things from a different position. I only hope that I will take all that I have learned in this role and continue to grow as a manager, coordinator professor and person. Thanks also to the staff for accepting me and not giving me too much of a hard time. Thanks also to those who have given me so much positive feedback over the last 14 weeks, I have enjoyed every minute of the job.”

SCA Media awards
I have only missed a couple of theses shows over the last 7 or 8 years, and I was sorry that had to miss this years’ considering all of the positive feedback I have received about it. Word is that even the new college president in attendance was very impressed with the professionalism of the student run event. Congratulations to the TV faculty and students for once again dismantling the entire airpack studio and successfully re-assembling in the YORK Theater next door, congratulations to the CMP faculty and students for running such a great show and thanks to all of the staff, parents and students who contributed to the success of the event, including all the nominated students from CMP, DMA, JBC, RTVR and RTVT.

Marks Due
Just a reminder your marks are all due by Monday morning at 10:00AM. If you have a second today, login to myseneca (https://my.senecacollege.ca/) select “Employee Services” from the tabs along the top, and in the “Enterprise Applications” module select “Faculty Tools”. After you login one more time, select “Grade Students”. If you are able to get to this point in the process, you will have no problem doing this before Monday and if you do have a problem, you will be able to work with the computer help desk (416-491-5050 x 2129) on making sure you are able to login in advance of the deadline.

After you submit your marks, please don’t forget to send your final mark breakdowns to Karen and your program coordinator. This can include your print off of the final marks as submitted via my Seneca, but should also include either a spreadsheet print out or a printout of your grade book on blackboard or for those not in the electronic mood, a printout of your personal mark log.

FITC
Seneca and the School of Communication Arts has played a key role in the very popular design and technology event – Flash in the Can over the last couple of years, and this year it is even bigger with Seneca as a key sponsor, the provider of the cyber café, and we also showcase our student work at our very own booth. The event starts Saturday and runs until Tuesday. Special thanks to Mark Jones and Joseph Bodick for their organizing skills and thanks also to Hassan Assiri, Adrian Klymenko and Luis Marmelo for providing all the computers for the event.

Brian Thomas
It was the late 70’s and in Toronto when you wanted in depth news coverage and thought provoking commentary of what was going on in the world you listened to the radio. News names and voices you can still hear today including Dick Symth, Mark Daley, Brian Williams, Rick Hodge, Brian Henderson and Seneca’s own – Brian Thomas. Investigative journalism at its best with the only interview ever conducted with Steven Truscott, by CHUM’s Brian Thomas. His amazing work is now being recognized by the Canadian Film Institute at their AV Trust Masterworks at a Gala in Ottawa on Monday. Congratulation to Brian on your well deserved award.

In the Screening room
Last Friday the TV faculty and students presented their year end screening of the 4th semester TV work, and judging from the positive feed back from all who attended the students have completed some incredible work this semester. Also, congratulations to the JBC students for screening their semester ending documentary work this past week at the first ever Doc Fest.

Portfolio Night
CAB has become an official sponsor of the annual portfolio review night for ihaveanidea.org know as PORTFOLIO NIGHT 7 Toronto to be held June 11th, 2009. It is the world’s largest advertising portfolio review and this year they will be hosting over 12 international cities and ihaveanidea.org is the “centre” of the creative advertising world website. Visited by “adlanders” and agencies personal daily. Our profile will be on the event site, which will run worldwide at http://portfolionight.com/7/archives/category/cities

Animation Book
The second edition of the ARTbook has been released this week and it looks FANTASTIC. Student work included is from all 3 years of the ANI program. Students purchased 2 pages each and are beautifully featured in this great looking book. With special thanks to Isabelle Babici for coordinating the ARTbook committee, Jim Zubkavich for handling the printing and Jim Graves and Lara (The Design Girl) Graves for layout and student advisement. Purchase a book today for $25.00 from Isabelle up in the AAC.

In closing
With the e-mail more then 300 words more then it normally is, I will close with just a short observation. One faculty member that I had met for the first time on Thursday told me that reading my confession e-mail was a highlight of her week, and that she liked it because she felt like she was part of the big team. OK here is the post game press conference, in the locker room after the big game. By the way, we won!

“Well I just can’t say enough good stuff about this whole team. Right from the training staff to the big guy over there, they all put in 110% the whole time, and just never gave up and it paid off, we won this 14 week tournament, we made it and I could not be prouder’. Ohh gosh I think I am going to cry”

Have a great marking weekend and see you next week for promotion and potluck!

Thanks! 14 (+1) down and 1 to go.
Jim

Flip-flop, flip-flop I saw my fist pair of flip-flops this morning, so I am happy to share the SPF 50 smothered, short wearing, put the sun glasses on and the music up loud, best weather yet, week 13 confessions e-mail.

Friendly Competition
For the 3rd year, 2nd semester AFD students were responsible for coming up with a mural design for the York Region CSV (community safety village) and this year’s winning design was created by Genuman Ho, Phillip Trieu, Gordon Chan and Michael Alves, from Jim Graves’ section of the AFD271 class. These students managed to edge out their competition, from the other section with both a strong final design and an excellent presentation, which effectively addressed the needs of the client. PC Phil Houghton from YRP said, “I think all of the murals were outstanding and truly captured what we asked for in the projects. It was hard to choose the actual winning one but this Project 0189 was able to capture a variety of units actually working as well as a variety of YRP officers in action.”

As always, Bill Suddick is now working closely with “Project 0189” on the final execution of the actual full size 8′ x 12′ mural. Special thanks should go out to both Phillip and Jed for their continued support of this great opportunity provided to our AFD students.

Doc Fest
Journalism Broadcast invites all students and faculty to the 2009 JBC DocFest at The Hive, 4-6pm on Tuesday April 21. Come watch some very cool productions about weekend warriors; Iraq War resisters; a haunted building; belly dancing; and a mockumentary documentary about documentary making!

SCA Media Awards
A little less than a week left for ticket sales and preparation for the SCA media awards (http://senecamediaawards.ca/) April 23rd. It looks like it will be another great event, and all are encouraged to order your tickets today and support this student run event. Also, don’t forget about Jed’s “thank you” reception at 4:00PM in the afternoon of awards day, Jed will host a reception that will be a great time to take a breath at the end of a very busy semester.

PotLuck
Well the lunchroom is almost finished, and with the end of the semester here, it seems it would be a good time for a little get together event to utilize officially kick it off. The first annual “Promo Week – SCA potluck lunch and great food celebration” is ON. I have put up a signup sheet on the bulletin board, and would like all who are interested in participating either the Tuesday or Wednesday of the Promo week (April 28th and 29th) to add their names and contribution. If you do not have your name on the list, you will not be eligible to participate, so I would strongly encourage you to put you name on the list for sure. Your contribution does not have to be a food item we will need plastic plates and utensils, drinks or even desserts. If you have any questions about the requirements, please let me know. I have already talked to a number of you and so far, it seems like it will be popular.

Faculty Forum 2009 Evite
Real Education: Classroom, College, Community is the focus for the one-day forum for all faculty, teaching staff, chairs and deans dedicated to collaboration, conversation and community building. Being held at the Newnham Campus – SeneCentre, May 5, 2009 from 8:30 – 5:00. This will be a great event to cover, teaching and learning strategies, opportunities to speak with colleagues in an open dialogue, resources and services available to faculty and teaching staff and professional development. For more information, contact Bev Brewer (Bev.Brewer@senecac.on.ca or 416.491.5050 x2883)

In closing
I start collecting the content for these e-mails almost after I hit the send button the week before, but the main building is Thursday night, and Friday morning. Well, the thinking anyway, the writing starts about an hour before it hits cyberspace. I look for things in my daily routine that remind me about something that I try to tie in as the main message, so the nice man driving the Audi, who passed me this morning waving his hands at me got me thinking. I am not sure exactly what I had done, but either he was trying to tell me that my sunglasses are too big for my face, or he felt that I needed to keep my eyes on the road more. It is possible that I was grooving to the tunes a little too loud and my mind drifted for a second off my inside the line responsibility, but what a nice man to share his feelings so openly on a public highway. If I can take anything from it to share with you, it would be that it is ok to look stupid and make funny arm, finger gestures to passing motorists, if in the end it makes you feel better about your own driving or life.

I do know this, I will be happy to get week 14 started next week, but I may take a different route in on Monday to do so.

Thanks! 13 (+1) down and 1 (+1) to go.
Jim

With my thoughts consumed by the idea of packing (see my last paragraph), 1 or 2 of those little chocolate bunny’s and a half dozen of the little eggs that for some reason, I find all over the house every year around this time, I am happy to present the 50%dark, 50% milk, much lighter then normal week 12 confessions e-mail.

Tax help?
Seneca’s own, Rob Corbett will speaking for an hour about tax exemptions and other important financial information for freelancers on Monday April 13th from 1:30pm -2:20pm (period 7) in room S2168. Most freelance artists don’t understand how easy it is to write off costs they incur throughout the year, and for the second year in a row Rob will share his experience to all whom wish to attend. Thanks Rob!

SCA Media Awards
Tickets went on sale this week, for the SCA media Awards to be held on April 23rd next at York University’s Accolade Theatre. Awards to be doled out for top DMA, CMP, RTVR, RTVT and JBC students. The event will be preceded at 4:00 PM by a small reception, hosted by Jed to say thank you for another great semester at SCA.

Acting for Camera and Voice
The New ACV program cleared another hurdle, and is currently at the ministry for their stamp of approval in the form of funding, and we hope to start looking at applicants in the next couple of weeks for a scheduled program start up in September at the Markham Campus.

TAVIS
The TAVIS project is nearing a pivotal part, with the release of the ad campaign suggestions for use of the new logo. We will also be working on possibly a corporate video, radio PSA’s and some TV commercial, and look for more info over the next phase of the project.

Admissions Meeting
This week the broadcasting group of programs had a meeting with Admissions, two things came to light that can affect all SCA programs. As a result of an effort to increase the timeliness of the application process, we are going to experiment with testing both the CAAT tests and the other applicant tests and the orientations on the same day. If it works and is manageable, it might be something other SCA programs might want to try. The second thing that came out of the meeting was access to digital weekly reports that our Admissions people do on a regular basis. I have added all coordinators and student advisors to the Blackboard community “Statistics Office” so look around and have some fun.

Good Day
In Radio the three things you should never talk about on air are Sex, Politics and Religion. Unless of course if you are on talk radio, then theses are the only things you should talk about! I treat theses e-mails as a collection of little radio bits I am doing on the air, on the imaginary radio station in my head (by the way my radio name on this station is Jungle Gym!). So talking about Good Friday is something I do very carefully, understanding that this is a very important symbolic religious holiday. But I will say this… any day that starts with word “Good” has to be a great one in any book.

What’s up Doc?
The JBC students have done some great work this spring, and you can see for yourself on Tuesday, April 21st from 4-6pm in The Hive as they host the 2009 Journalism Broadcast DocFest.

In Closing
We are moving… when I say we, I mean my wife, my two girls, Bentley the super dog and Sugar the gold fish are moving at the end of the month to Caledon, to live with my Sister, her family and my Mom for the summer. The plan is that we are going to buy our first house in July or August back in Mississauga. The only reason I bring this up is to paint a picture of what we have been going through at home and to setup my last quote. Over the last, we made two trips to the dump, countless trips to donation drop off locations and after a Craig’s list customer was picking up the couch we sold last night, my oldest daughter found a 4 foot, girl doll that had been destined for the drop off box. When she grabbed it and proceeded to take it to her room, I had to put my foot down and remind her that she has not played with her in 6 or 7 years. She just smiled and said, “Well this is a good time to start then”.

It is I guess a good time to start on the rest of the packing, and that I will be doing all weekend!

Happy Easter, happy Passover and the best to you and your families.

Thanks! 12 (+1) down and 2 (+1) to go.
Jim