gum workshop and offlist very offtopic request
Good morning all, I thought I would keep this on ALT to persuade you to read this email and then ask those of you a favor so forgive me in my plight. First of all, I am teaching a gum workshop at the Photographer's Formulary this summer, August 3-8 I think it is. I have had some offlist requests for teaching a workshop and can't remember from whom or where so I will give you the URL in case you are interested. I am really excited to do this finally, as I have talked about it for a couple years and finally decided to "just do it". Summer is usually my time to make work and I have to guard that time wisely. Mind you, I will condense about 3 weeks of gum teaching in 5 days so come prepared to work your butt off. We will be working at night, too, perhaps some wine will sweeten that workload :) http://www.photoformulary.com/DesktopDefault.aspx\?tabindex=3&tabid=15 ***Now, stop here if you don't want to get into academic politics BELOW IS NOT ALT.*** As some of you in academia know, the college population is decreasing somewhat for the next 10 years at which time it will rise again (the baby boomer's boomer's boomers?). MSU where I work has had to cut 1 million from their budget because of a loss of 500 students campus-wide. Somehow in this equation, our College of Arts and Architecture dean has suggested, since one of our faculty is retiring at the end of this year, to give our tenure track line to film, and in doing so absorb our major into a combo film/photography degree or cut down what we teach and move our major to the art department. You can imagine our shock. For instance, it was floated by us that "3 departments are teaching digital--photo, architecture, graphic design--we don't need 3 to teach that, we should consolidate" and "film students and photography students will WANT to learn both disciplines" etc. etc. We serve 130 photo majors and 260 beginning BW photo students per year (MSU has about 12,000 campuswide). We teach everything from commercial to fine art, analog to digital to alt. We have had to streamline our classes to be sequential and menu-plan to handle our load with 3 tenure lines and 5 adjuncts as it is. Here are the classes we teach in case you are interested; if not, skip: MTA 103RA Understanding Photography (beginning wet darkroom BW) MTA 106 Intermediate Photography (intermediate wet darkroom BW) MTA 260 Intro to Color Photo (all digital) MTA 264 Advanced B&W Photography (advanced view camera wet darkroom BW) MTA 301 Investigations into Photography (photo theory) MTA 303 Early History of Photography MTA 304 Recent History of Photography MTA 341 Portraiture (analog and digital, 35mm-large format) MTA 342 Advanced Lighting Practices (studio, analog and digital, 35mm-large format) MTA 344 Experimental Photography (analog wet darkroom, no digital, no contact printing processes) MTA 361 Professional Practices (business side of photography) MTA 400 Production Seminar (flexibility to offer a unique class) MTA 319 Non-Silver Photography (digital negatives and contact printing processes) MTA 343 Non-Fiction Photography (documentary) MTA 360 Advanced Color (all digital, bookmaking, website, animation, etc.) MTA 473/5 Senior Production Photo (two semesters, independent body of work created) A favor--can any of you who have taught or gotten a photo degree, write me offlist and tell me what we are not offering that we should, what we are offering that is unnecessary, perhaps what your curriculum is in a list, if this is happening in your college, ANY advice or input is welcome as we are completely taken off guard and need to immediately build a case for ourselves. I know I am in crisis mode here but this list has given great advice in the past and I would appreciate any feedback whatsoever you have for me--offlist would be best so Gordon does not have to yell at me, unless you think this "state of photography" is somehow applicable to alt. Chris Christina Z. Anderson Assistant Professor Photo Option Coordinator Montana State University CZAphotography.com _______________ |