Greetings From the Head of the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film

I welcome this opportunity to tell you about the Media, Journalism, & Film Department, our program and our faculty. In 2008-2009, we welcome Kevin Swift who will teach in our Broadcast Journalism program. This fall, we are delighted once again to bring back to Missouri State University the Manhattan Short Film Festival, a very successful and entertaining event that we are pleased to host. In addition, we are continuing our undergraduate certificate program in screenwriting for both traditional and nontraditional students.

The Department consists of the following majors, a B.S. in Mass Media with a concentration in Media Production and Digital Film Production, a B.A. or B.S. in Media Studies, Film Studies and Media Operations (with a required minor), a B.S. in Journalism emphasizing in Print or Broadcast (with a required minor) and a B.A. in Electronic Arts with an emphases in Audio, Video, Computer Animation, or Multimedia Studies (with a required minor).

I am very proud of our dedicated community of life scholars-teachers-practitioners. Our exceptional faculty currently includes 12 full-time faculty and a full-time support staff of three trained specialists. Our faculty includes filmmakers, multi-media and web artists, print and broadcast journalists, and film and media scholars. I believe that it is this diversity of specialties, perspectives, and methods that make our department an exciting place to pursue an undergraduate major.

We seek to keep our facilities and faculty current with the changes underfoot as we move to a new media era, one characterized, by high definition formats, digital technology, and more changes in the media landscape than most can yet imagine. Students train in Avid non-linear video editing and DigiDesign Protools audio post production labs, the same software currently in use in TV and film studios. We have an instructional television studio, multiple audio recording facilities, an Apple multimedia lab, a print & photo journalism lab, and a broadcast journalism lab. We house the student-run campus newspaper, the Standard, and the student-run Internet radio station, the Growl. We also manage the university film series. Missouri State Uuniversity is the home of Ozarks Public Television (KOZK-TV), the region's public television service and KSMU (91.1 FM).

Our department serves over 400 majors. I am extremely proud of not only our faculty but of the achievements of our students. We are pleased to see our students continue in graduate programs or employed in successful careers in various aspects of the media industry. Byron Smith (Class 1999) and John Hull (Class 1992) were accepted as Editing and Directing Fellows respectively at the prestigious American Film Institute. Following his Fellowship, Byron Smith has worked as an editor for FX Network's, Nip/Tuck and the feature film Running with Scissors written by Augusten Burroughs. Kevin Muenks (Class 1992), cinematographer for the Missouri Department of Conservation, won an Silver Screen award for form the International Film and Video Festival for his film, Missouri Tallgrass Prairie: An American Original. Patrick Mureithi (Class 2001) had his half hour documentary, Many Steps, picked up for distribution by California Newsreels, a premiere black documentary distributor. Sarah Bennett (Class 2003) received a Society for Environmental Journalism award for "Outstanding Small Market Reporting" for her investigative broadcast report entitled Baldwin Park. Sarah Bennett works as a TV news reporter in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jennie Bell (Class 2002) is a TV news producer at KOTV in Tulsa. Greg Kellogg (Class 2000) won a Regional Emmy for Outstanding Spot News in 2003. Kellogg works as a news photographer for KMSP in Minneapolis, MN. Mikel Rosenthal (Class 2002) is a designer at Biersma Creative. Lisa Page (Class, 2000) is a Senior News Producer at KOLR-TV in Springfield. Nick Corporon and Mun Kang are pursuing graduate work at Chapman University. This is to name but a few.

Mark M. Biggs
Head, Dept of Media, Journalism & Film