Department of Communication and
Loyola College's Year of the City Initiative

PROPOSAL
Restoring Baltimore: A Multimedia Educational Initiative

Summary:  “Restoring Baltimore” is a student-produced, faculty-supervised multimedia project, the goal of which is to document, in a variety of media, the revitalization of the landmarks, neighborhoods and homes of Baltimore.

Background:  During the inauguration of Fr. Brian Linane, S.J. as the new President of Loyola College in Maryland, he galvanized the faculty and students by declaring that the year of 2006-2007 would be a “Year of the City” for Loyola College.  During that year the College would focus its attention on its responsibilities toward, and contributions to the city of Baltimore.  Faculty would be encouraged to develop research programs that touch issues of concern to the city, and develop more service learning courses that insert the students into the realities of the problems of the city and ask them to use their education to help find solutions to the cities critical issues.  In addition, students would be encouraged to explore the unique cultural and historical heritages, both in their studies and in their free time.

The Restoring Baltimore Project proposes to harness the talents and skills of students and faculty in video and audio production, graphics, journalism, public relations, and the fine arts to document the landmarks, neighborhoods, and historic homes of Baltimore, to examine the progress being made to revitalized those areas, and to explore the impact all this is having on the people of Baltimore.

The Project:  The project would consist of several student teams each of which would be responsible for the production of this project using different media.

Video and Audio:  Students would produce a video profiles of neighborhoods, landmarks, and individuals who are engaged in the planning and execution of the revitalization, or of members of the neighborhoods affected by the revitalization.  Once completed, these would be aired on the Baltimore City Educational Channel (ch 25 on Comcast), and they would be made available to other media in the area.  Students interested in audio production would be encouraged to do the same kinds of programs for airing on WLOY Radio, on the Internet, and as podcasts.

Book:  Journalism students will be involved in research for all aspects of this project.  In addition, they will be asked to write essays about various aspects of this project which will be gathered together, edited, and published in book form by Apprentice House, Loyola’s student-run on-line book publishing company (www.apprenticehouse.com).

Photography:  Photography students will be asked to photograph these neighborhoods and their residents, the revitalization projects already underway, and collect historic photographs of these places and buildings.  Some of these will be used in the book project and others will be shown in a photography exhibit at Loyola College’s art gallery, and / or at other venues.

Website:  Finally, graphics and webdesign students will be asked to rework all this material for use on a website that makes the project available to the larger world of the Internet and presents the challenges and progress made in Baltimore’s effort to renew itself.

Funding Needs:  A pedagogy of “experiential learning” characterizes the approach of Loyola’s Communication Department.  We attempt to challenge students to learn by confronting them with realistic professional projects from which we challenge them to learn the skills they need to execute the project and to reflect on the theoretical and real-world implications of their use of the media of mass communications. 

This project is an excellent example, and it has the added advantage of being a comprehensive and unified project, not unlike the kind of project that students will encounter in the working world of journalism, public relations, video, and audio production.  But no single class in our curriculum can encompass the scope of this project and still cover the other objectives of that class.  It is quite possible that senior leaders of these teams may get credit for their work as part of the Senior Seminar project.  But most team members will be volunteers.