Confessions of a...

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

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