CHICAGO, IL (March 26, 2009) – This fall, Columbia College Chicago will launch the fourth year of Critical Encounters, the school’s campus-wide learning initiative, with an interdisciplinary examination of the historic, political, cultural and artistic impact of the concepts of “fact” and “faith,” and the way these notions are often intertwined in our culture.
In announcing the theme, which will be explored through both classroom curriculum and public programs, Provost/Senior Vice President Steven Kapelke emphasized that Fact & Faith is “designed to complicate our collective thinking about faith in our various public arenas rather than creating a ‘science versus religion’ dichotomy. It promises to be an exciting year.”
“In the realms of both science and religion, I am what you might call an ethnographic observer,” says 2009-10 faculty fellow Eric Scholl. “My father was a Methodist minister whose faith centered on social justice issues. My mother was a church-going agnostic school teacher. This background influenced my worldview and fed my work as a documentarian.”
In addition to exploring faith as it inspires, art, writing and creativity – “faith conceived as anything from the all-powerful God to the creative muse” – Scholl is interested in the border area between what any given perspective deems “fact” or “faith.”
“At this historic point we are primarily experiencing this as a dichotomy: science versus religion or religion versus religion,” he says. “And, today, science is the guiding force for many people - their religion so to speak. The point of overlap, the place where boundaries merge or blur, is a huge landscape ready for serious exploration.
“There are so many areas to examine with this theme. One challenge that we will face as we design curriculum and public programming is being able to separate the work, such as a poem, dance, painting or film, from the topic of the work. That is, can you critique a religiously inspired work on its artistic merits without appearing to be a heretic?”
A Fact & Faith task force comprised of Columbia faculty, students, artists and administrators from a cross-section of disciplines, as well as community partners will begin meeting in April with Scholl and his Critical Encounters partner Lott Hill, director of Columbia’s Center for Teaching Excellence. The group will develop curriculum and programming for the 2009-10 academic year.
Eric Scholl is an associate professor in the Television Department of Columbia College Chicago where he teaches courses in documentary, producing and directing. He is also an independent documentary filmmaker whose videos have been seen on local and national television and in festivals internationally. His documentary, The End of the Nightstick: Confronting Police Violence in Chicago, aired nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.” showcase. Scholl’s latest work, It’s in the Blood: Leo Abshire & the Cajun Tradition, looks at the musical heritage of western Louisiana. Scholl is vice president of the board of Free Spirit Media, a not-for-profit organization that partners with schools and organizations to provide education, access and opportunity in media production to underserved urban youth. He holds an M.F.A. in Film & Video from Northwestern University.
Lott Hill is co-director of Columbia’s Center for Teaching Excellence, where he has served the college in various capacities since 2004. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Before coming to the Center for Teaching Excellence, Hill was College/Community Liaison for the Office of Community Arts Partnerships (now Center for Community Arts Partnerships), and he has taught in the departments of cultural studies, New Millennium Studies, and fiction writing. Lott has published and presented on a variety of topics, including service-learning, engaging students in the classroom, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He has also published and performed numerous works of fiction.
Critical Encounters is a college-wide initiative intended to synchronize conversations between the school and the community in an ongoing dialogue around a central, socially and culturally relevant issue each academic year. The purpose of Critical Encounters is to further enhance Columbia College’s commitment to civic engagement by inviting students, faculty and staff to explore and reflect upon the chosen issue so that we better understand the impact of that issue in relation to our role as artists, communicators, and media makers, and as those who shape public perception and author the culture of our times.
-end-
CHICAGO, IL (March 19, 2009) -- In an effort to provide greater transparency and predictability for student costs, Columbia College has restructured mandatory course fees to better reflect resources and materials used, based on a survey of course requirements across the college’s arts, media and academic disciplines. The new Instructional Resource Fees (IRF) will be in place for the Fall 2009 term.
Prompted by student concerns – voiced by the Student Government Association – about the basis for the course fees, IRF are the result of an exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of Columbia’s historic course fee structure and are designed to better reflect the varying levels of resources required for teaching various disciplines. While fees will still be assessed on a course-by-course basis, all courses in a given department will carry the same fee.
Academic departments have been divided into four tiers based on their relative levels of resource requirements. Courses in departments that use the fewest instructional resources (English; History, Humanities, Social Sciences; New Millennium Studies and Marketing Communications) will now have no instructional resources fees. Courses in the other three tiers—those that use increasingly greater levels of resources – will have $40, $70, and $115 fees respectively. Materials that contribute to the assessment of fees include such items as guest lectures, consumable materials (e.g., photo paper, chemicals), musical accompaniment, etc. There will be no instructional resources fee assessed for courses carrying one credit regardless of department. Courses carrying five or more credits will have fees double those of other courses in that department.
While the restructuring reflects a zero-based total (i.e., no additional revenue to the college from fees), there will now be no fee for approximately 35% of all courses. In addition, the maximum fee is now $230, as contrasted with the previous maximum of $415. The new structure reflects a more equitable distribution of fees across students and disciplines.
The college intends to hold the instructional resource fees at the current levels for the next three years. After that time, instructional expenditures will again be analyzed and fees may be reset. This should further help students predict upcoming costs.
The new fee amounts will be included in the course catalog and on the Student Financial Services website.
-end-
CHICAGO, IL (March 17, 2009) -- The Columbia Chronicle was named the state’s top student newspaper in its category. This represents the second year in a row the weekly publication has received top honors from the Illinois College Press Association.
In addition to the General Excellence Award, the Columbia Chronicle garnered more than a dozen award in categories ranging from feature story to photo essay, design and advertising awards.
Students from the Journalism, Photography, Marketing Communications, Film and Video and Art and Design Departments were honored at the ICPA convention in February. A full list of awards and awardees is available online.
-end-
Chicago, IL (March 10, 2009) – Despite the economic hard times, The Columbia College Chicago Library wants to encourage Chicagoans to remember the importance of things that add meaning and depth to our lives: arts, culture, literature, and the joy of reading.
Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read grant, The Library will present community and public programming this spring on Fahrenheit 451, the classic work by Illinois native Ray Bradbury.
The cautionary dystopian tale looks at a world where books are not allowed and rather than putting out fires, firemen raid secret caches of books, burning them and making public examples of individuals who would dare to read – or think independently.
“The themes of book burning, censorship, and the threat to critical thought and inquiry are issues which resonate more than 50 years after the book’s original publication,” says Library Director Jan Chindlund. “In our community-based book discussion groups as well as our public programming we will be taking a serious look at these issues. We will also have some fun with the characters and ideas that Bradbury birthed.”
The Big Read kicks off on April 2, with speakers, and a film screening featuring a documentary on Ray Bradbury and his life, followed by a reception with Fahrenheit 451-themed food and drink.
In addition to free public events on the Columbia campus, The Big Read will include book discussion groups in Chicago and suburban area public libraries and bookstores, as well as student-focused activities with in the Berwyn and Cicero districts and the Chicago Public Schools.
The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest. This program is supported in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
-end-