Wow. What a year it has been so far. So, the last time that I wrote the spring semester hadn't yet begun. My, how much has changed.

Most significantly, the Department of Communication - and to a large extent the Electronic Media and Broadcasting program - have been given NKU's Channel 18 as part of a cost-cutting reorganization in response to the Commonwealth's budget reduction. This is an incredible opportunity but also a great responsibility. Our students will now be creating most of the media going out to Northern Kentucky on our cable station. We'll be making media about NKU and the region, leveraging the intellectual power and social consciousness on campus. We will also spread the media over all appropriate outlets: the internet, on handheld devices, on the television and in the theatre.

On July 1 the "old" Channel 18 shuts down. We'll primarily run a slide show of "Coming back soon!" images for a while as we begin to understand the playback system and staff up. And speaking of staffing up - we will be hiring two new faculty members to help teach about television media creation and run Channel 18. If we can find the right people we'll have a producer/director and an engineer on staff for the fall. Eventually, each will teach a course or two a semester based around their areas of expertise. We'll also gain a graduate assistant to help run the 'office' and have a handful of student workers. Yes, we'll have the chance to employ some of our best, most talented students inside the department. Channel 18's new focus is on NKU and the university's connection to the community.

Beyond this great news - and this has been incredible news, especially in our current fiscal environment - we've had some other wonderful things happen in EMB. The "Pathways to Tomorrow" project that we put together in January recently won a Bronze Telly in the professional interactive media for government relations category. We are into another season of Studio 89, and are nearly complete with our latest digital cinema class - this one with a client. Our two movies (on plagiarism and copyright infringement) will be used in junior high and high schools throughout the region.

I'm going to cut this short right now, but I'll be back more frequently with updates about the EMB program, filmmaking in Cincinnati USA and other cool things happening in the College of Informatics at NKU.