Confessions of the Acting Associate Chair – Week 12

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

Confessions of the Acting Associate Chair – Week 11

With the clocking ticking on 091, assuming you have marking or something else to do, I present the super short, hyper compressed, but just as filling, week 11 confessions e-mail!

Big Announcement
As you are most likely aware by now, the Board of Governors has announced that the 5th President of Seneca College is David Agnew. Thanks to the Presidential search committee with two SCA members, for their work and commitment to the long process. I personally look forward to working with our new president.

Open House
I look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow at the Seneca Open house, starting at 10:00AM. Remember, Student Services does provide some light refreshments for staff and volunteers. As long as you like cookies and juice, they’ve got you covered.

DMA Advisory board meeting
Thanks to Joe Bodick for letting me take part in the DMA advisory board meeting this week. I was involved in some very lively decisions with this group of talented and dynamic industry reps that is sure to keep the program at the top of its game. One highlight for me was talking with Stuart Sackler, a Seneca grad that had worked for GANZ and their very popular kids division of Webkinz world (http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/). It was cool telling my girls that I met the guy who designed “Quizzy’s Corners” and to see their face light up as if I had met Oprah.

In the screening room
A group of fourth semester JBC documentary students will be joining Sunny Yi and James Cullingham at the Bloor Cinema on April 14th for a screening of DOWNSTREAM, a new documentary about the environmental impact of oil sands development in Alberta. After the screening, there’ll be a Panel Discussion chaired by MP Olivia Chow featuring film director Leslie Iwerks, NDP leader Jack Layton and environmentalists. If you are interested in attending yourself, please email James Cullingham.

Milestones
Ten years ago, the School of Communication Arts was located a couple of kilometers east of our current York home in a little industrial complex on Finch Avenue. Depending who you ask, we had 5 or 6 programs with somewhere around 1000 students in total. Some would say we were at a transitional “make or break” point of our young existence. With the plan for our move to the new building well underway, the call went out for a new leader to take the reins of SCA and that call was answered in a big way. I still remember the first time the staff and faculty met our new leader, sitting on a desk in the front of a large classroom, and all we were thinking was “Who is this guy in the jeans and cowboy boots”. Thank you and congratulations to Jed and his 10 years of leadership as of April 1, and here’s to the next 10!

Return to sender
Again thanks to all who take the time to reply and respond to my confession e-mails and thanks for your advice on some of my musings. I do truly love this part of getting to know you and love hearing your ideas and thoughts. If you have announcements regarding your students, courses, programs or personal life and you wish to share, I would love to pass it along in future e-mails so please feel free to reply.

In closing
The last word this week goes to my 6-year-old daughter, Julia. I am not sure where she heard it, or if she understands what it means, but this week before bed she danced into our bedroom and announces to my wife, in her look at me, I am cute voice, “Let’s do yoga…. relax your soul!”.

I am on my way home to get my mat, and think I may try downward laying duck tonight!

Thanks! 11 (+1) down and 3 (+1) to go.
Jim

Confessions of the Acting Associate Chair – Week 10

The last full week of March is in the books and the forecast looks good for the remaining 4 weeks of school, so I am happy to present the home stretch, room moving edition of the confessions e-mail for week 10.

Student success
Great news and congratulations to the 4th Semester CAB group who presented to their program partner zig this week. They provided students with a real “live” brief for two of their clients, Burt’s Bees and PeakSaver and this week the students presented their fully integrated advertising campaigns to Lynda Torneck, the account director on both accounts for zig and the Burt’s Bee client who was “blown away” and completely floored with attention to detail and suggestions made for the brand. The two winning groups will now be given the opportunity to present to the zig team and might even get the opportunity to have the work created for execution. They used total new media as the “push” and even the Lynda was blown away by the engagement of using YouTube and Twitter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnOWOGSuX5k

Our faculty Rock!
As I write this, James Cullingham is presenting a talk at L’Alliance francaise about Jacques Soustelle, the French ethnologist of Mexico-politician-journalist who is a principal subject of his history PhD dissertation. We will let you know how it goes next week.

Program success
A great public endorsement for the CAB Program got from Scott Goodson of StrawberryFrog in New York City. Anthony is quoted as saying “This is like getting Speilberg to say your wedding video is Oscar worthy” http://scottgoodson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/award-shows-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly.html

Guest Lecture
The renowned illustrator, James Gurney whose many accomplishments include “Dinotopia”, which he both authored and illustrated, presented his work at S@Y on Wednesday and a GREAT time was had by all. Faculty member, Jim Graves had this to say “That was exciting, inspirational and just plain FANTASTIC! What a great thing to do for our students!” Thanks to Phillip Woolf for organizing and to all the people who made it out.

Lunch Room
At the start of the semester, when I posted my schedule on my office door, I added “lunch club” to each day in hopes I would get an opportunity to get to know more staff and faculty in a casual setting. Some of the best conversations I have had with faculty over the years, dated back to Peter Houston’s office with Ron Lowe and Michael Monty. We solved more of the issues plaguing the world in those 1 hour lunches then I can even count, so the idea of bringing it back was something I have been thinking about for a long time. When Karen said to me, “we need a lunch room” it all made sense. We started talking about it 4 or 5 weeks ago, and it has sure come together with furniture almost completely moved. Thanks so much to Anna for coordinating the whole thing and stay tuned for an upcoming event to launch our new SCA lunch room.

In closing
I understand from years of asking smarter people then me, that the appearance of the first Robin around this time each year signals the TRUE launch of spring. Well at the start of the week, on my front porch, I had my fist sighting. Although, I am not holding too much trust in this particular bird’s seasonal predictability, on the account of the fact he keeps flying into the top edge of my window as if looking for a safe place to land with NO place to do so. I have even built a little shelf, in hopes he would find a safe place to sit, but no luck, he (or she?) keeps hitting the top edge and falling down, and then flying to the railing looking back as if to say “wow I thought that I could fit”. I understand that Einstein said that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, but maybe we have had it wrong all this time. Maybe sometime over the weekend he will stick the landing.

I do know this… I am going to fly back to my little ledge in room 2061 on Monday for week 11, and I look forward to seeing you in the lunchroom.

Thanks! 10 (+1) down and 4 (+1) to go.
Jim