Digital Sound Design Studio Inauguration in Spring 2011 with Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz, Jr.
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he Hostos digital media design and production programs have come to provide our population, 97% of whom are minority students, 67% of whom are women, access to technology fields where they are traditionally underrepresented. These students are given an opportunity to discover their potential in multimedia through courses in general art and design, computer technologies, and media production as well as through internships that allow them to exercise their newfound skills to the fullest extent possible in professional practice. Courses in the sequences are not merely technology-focused; they help students develop a host of important skills sets including creative and critical thinking, problem solving, collaborative metrologies, communication, productivity, accountability, and self-direct learning. We have found that success in our media design and production classes often helps motivate students to rededicate themselves to their general education as they take required courses in Language, Science, English, and Math as part of their program sequence. 24
In recent months our approach to collaborative discipline has expanded into summer projects with the professional community. In August 2011, two Hostos Digital Design and Animation professors took 14 Hostos students and recent graduates to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts for the Hostos Design Digital Lab 2011. A 12-day immersive design experience, the Hostos Design Lab offered students the opportunity to investigate the question, “What is a cultural worker?” through interviews with members of the Berkshire community. The project explored collaboration and community under the guidance of Hostos faculty and Museum staff. The student collaborators were handpicked based on their skills as designers, typographers, editors, videographers, and audio engineers to live in communal housing (a new experience for these students) and work collaboratively with their professors and professional artists from the community. The experience took the students out of the classrooms and helped them to contextualize what they were learning about design at Hostos within the world of art, and offered them opportunity to clearly see how that knowledge might be applied in a professional context. The Hostos Design Lab culminated in an exhibition at the Museum that shared the outcomes of the students’ inquiry.