will be well used by students who are taking new courses in digital media production, new media, and documentary film production. “Students are going to be exposed to a production level that previously we could only tinker around the edges at,” said Zavodny. “So in the documentary film class, every student will have the experience of planning, shooting, editing, and producing a short documentary film.” Zavodny’s example highlights how curricular planning – and planning for videography and documentary film in particular – has gone back years as faculty identified areas for improvement. “Years ago we recognized that video is becoming an increasingly important tool for environmental scientists, educators, and advocates,” Zavodny said. “Without the capacity to produce high quality video products our graduates were going into the workplace at a deficit.” He added that videography was identified as a priority issue due to its importance to the environmental science program, environmental humanities, and general education. Essentially most every part of the curriculum is touched by video in some way. The bottom line is serving Unity’s environmental mission in ways that make sense for the environmental challenges of the 21st century. “It’s irresponsible for an environmental college focused on environmental science not to place an emphasis on media because ultimately all the good science in the world is meaningless if it cannot be communicated,” Zavodny said. “What we’re trying to do is develop the communication capacity of our graduating seniors so that they can go out into the world and immediately be effective communicators of the sustainability science that they have learned at Unity College.”
Equipping Unity for Technological Flexibility The technology tools in Unity’s multi-media classroom and training laboratory are state of the art. They are among the best and most advanced commercially available. The technology available to students in both the multi-media classroom and training laboratory includes: • 30 HP Z1 workstations, all-in-one units with 27” screens and 3.3 GHz Intel XEON server-grade CPUs with 8 GB RAM and 2 TB of storage. • 6 Apple iMac desktops with 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5 CPUs, 8 GB RAM and 2TB storage. • Each machine is loaded with a collection of software packages including Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection and ESRI ArcGIS software. • The suite of technology is augmented by various photo scanners, high definition still and video cameras, microphones, lenses, and other multi-media peripherals. • 2 Epson BrightLink 485wi interactive projectors, one per room, which turn ordinary whiteboards into “smart” boards that can host both traditional dry-erase markers as well as electronic pens for virtual drawing and image markup. • Finally, an HP Z6200 large-format high-quality photo printer rounds out the solution, replacing an aging network plotter. This heavy-duty machine offers the campus community fast, photo-quality printing on paper and fabric rolls from 11 inches to 42 inches wide and up to 150 feet in length. It is capable of printing on coated and bond papers for everyday working comps and design proofs, satin and gloss photo papers for photo printing, museum-quality artist canvas fabrics, as well as clear, backlit and self-adhesive films, vinyl and Dupont Tyvek materials for indoor and outdoor displays, posters and banners and signage.
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