Central Wyoming College
Wyoming PBS and Central Wyoming College:
An Alliance of Strengths
Wyoming PBS is a service of Central Wyoming College (CWC). As part of Wyoming PBS's relationship with CWC, it assists the college in offering numerous audio/visual and broadcasting programs aimed at readying students for careers in the television, radio, and production fields. Wyoming PBS also broadcasts telecourses that are used by the state's community college system and others.
About the Program
Central Wyoming College alumnus and new broadcasting instructor Amanda
Watkins predicts the college will have the "premiere" TV broadcasting
school in the state that will give community college students
unprecedented access to learn on state-of-the art equipment and graduate
with a marketable resume tape. A 1992 graduate of the associate degree
broadcasting program, Amanda took the fast track to Market 5, a large city
network owned station, but decided to take a different career path and
return to her alma mater. "It was scary and very hard," she recalled of
turning in her CWC employment application. "People don't leave market 5;
people retire from market 5."
After completing the program at CWC, Watkins
enrolled at the University of Montana and her first job was at a CBS
affiliate in Missoula. In 1999, she was hired by an NBC station in Green
Bay, Wis., promoting news programming, and in 2000, a San Francisco
station owned and operated by NBC called her for a job. "People don't make
it to market 5 this quickly," she said. "People spend their whole lives
and never make it to market 5." When CWC Broadcasting Professor Dale Smith
called to Amanda this summer to tell her the college was again re-focusing
on television broadcasting and hiring a new instructor, Watkins considered
it somewhat as an omen. "I always knew I was being fast tracked for some
reason," she said, thinking maybe that it was her destiny to teach the
next generation.
While the radio side of CWC's broadcasting program was
very strong under the tutelage of Smith, Watkins said equipment and
facilities issues hampered the growth of the TV side of the program. In
her first semester, Amanda already has a "at capacity" class of motivated
students. With Wyoming PBS vacating valuable space in the
Lowell A. Morfeld Student Center, the college is creating a new classroom
and studio space that will new include new digital editing suites. The
re-introduction of the program also creates a symbiotic relationship
between WPTV and CWC. The students have the opportunity to learn on the
stations new digital equipment and in turn they volunteer to work as crew
members on the station's local productions. "It's a win-win opportunity,"
Watkins said "It is the most amazing hands-on opportunity that no other
freshman in the country would ever have." In their first months of class,
her freshmen, for example, have already been running cameras, serving as
floor directors, running graphics and other important components of
putting together a live show. "Eventually, they will be doing every
position," she said.
In addition to the crew work, her students will
conduct interviews, shoot commercials and shoot long and short form
documentaries, she said. She is also planning on student-produced local
Fremont County high school and college sports programming. The students
will also provide footage to other news stations in the state. In the
first year, students concentrate on studio operations, working in "all
kinds of formats that happen within a studio." The following semester,
students will focus on field work, learning to shoot footage outside of
the studio, and being projects such as story board development and
creating programming for both entertainment and news. In the second year,
everything the broadcasting students do is geared toward creating content
for Rustler TV, CWC's educational cable channel.
"I'm taking four years of knowledge that a student would be taught at a
university and compressing it into two years," she said, acknowledging
that it will be a "high pressure environment, but it will be fun."
Watkins' students will leave CWC with not only an associate's degree, but
with a resume tape. "When they leave here, they will be able to get a
job," she believes. "It's not necessarily about the degree you have, it's
the resume tape. They should leave here with a resume tape equal to
graduates of a four-year institution if not better. Maybe better because I
never shot documentaries when I got my bachelors.
Visit the Central Wyoming College Website
www.cwc.edu
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