THUNDER BAY -- Confederation College has extended the freeze on its broadcasting and television production program to a second year.
Last January the college announced that due to declining interest in the program as reflected in a drop in enrolment applications, it was suspending for the 2016-17 school year. Only six students had submitted applications to the first year of the two-year program for enrolment this fall.
At the time, the college said students already enrolled would complete the second and final year of classes this year, while staff and administration considered alternate ways to deliver the program.
Now, president Jim Madder has confirmed that the decision on retooling the Broadcasting program has been delayed “at the request of the faculty and the (program’s) coordinator, to give them more time to figure out how to best put this together.”
Madder told tbnewswatch.com that the review includes how Broadcasting might be combined with film or some other related programs “so that we can attract people into all of those.”
He added “I’d love to see that decision made sooner rather than later but it needs to be the right decision.”
Madder said he’ll be disappointed if at the end of the exercise the college doesn’t have a broadcasting program.
“We have to get people to understand there’s great viable opportunities there, so clustering it with other programs for attracting people, and having students that understand the role of broadcasting, is where we’d like to go.”
He said he remains optimistic there will be a positive outcome to the discussions.
“The nature of broadcasting has changed really dramatically, particularly the last ten years, with Internet and a different approach to people disseminating information. But broadcasting itself is still really important…We’ve got great, talented faculty members here as well.”
Madder said that while the review continues, faculty members have got “other related programs they can teach in and they’re actually extremely busy. But a huge amount of their job is to try and figure this out. How do we best meld these programs or put these programs together in a fashion which makes sense for all of them?”
The Confederation College studios were rebuilt and re-equipped 10 years ago with cutting-edge technology. In 2013, the program launched an Internet-based radio station.
