Media, Environment and Culture in Australia: Course Work
Program Director, Dr. Folu F. Ogundimu's Statement:
Kata
Tjuta (The Olgas) in the shade of dawn
-Photo
By Folu F. Ogundimu
IF
THIS were a 30-second television commercial, we would parody that
MasterCard spot and say "Six Weeks Down Under. Priceless! For Everything
Else, Bring Your Sense of Adventure, Your Brains, And Your Checkbook."
We cannot completely recapture the sheer adventure of doing fieldwork in a natural setting like the Outback of Australia, the incomparable joy of experiencing the country's poly-ethnic culture, or the incredible beauty of its landscape. Also impossible to recapture is the awe, the spiritual entrancement of facing and touching landmarks shaped by time and space, and left unspoiled despite human contact. On this website and its associated links, we provide glimpses into the world of the 2002 MSU media program in Australia by featuring samples of works completed by the 18 students who undertook the program. By all measures, these students are the stars of the program.
We
hope that the artifacts of their works displayed on this website will
serve as markers of their time in Australia, in the quest for knowledge
and understanding. Hopefully, visitors to the website will appreciate
that the students learned and worked quite a bit whilst doing some of
the partying most usually associated with Study Abroad Programs. Admittedly,
balancing the objective of education with the irrepressible energy and
desire for fun by students makes for creative tensions in managing these
programs. However, perhaps the illustrations of some
of their work will provide insight into their learning experience during
six weeks of intensive fieldwork, classroom instruction, and frequent
travels around a country that is about the physical size of continental
U.S.A.
(L-R: Folu Ogundimu,
Arvind Diddi, Scott Shaner
at the UNSW School of Media & Communication)
We
will not attempt to re-create here, the information about the course objectives
and work assignments of the media in Australia program because other links
on this site have that material. Instead, we want to acknowledge here
the importance of the collaboration we have enjoyed by our partners in
the MSU media program. For the overall success of the program, we thank
our friends at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) for their effort
in seeing that the course was implemented as conceived, and for assuring
our comfort and safety during six weeks of living Down Under.
In
the end, credits for a successful outcome for the program belong to the
students, for doing much of the work, believing that they could accomplish
all that was required for course participation and credit. Also, we thank
them for their patience in learning new and often difficult skills under
trying deadline conditions. Of course, we could not have accomplished
all of this without the use of the excellent facilities of the School
of Media and Communications, UNSW (Sydney), and the excellent guidance
of its staff. For that, we thank Professor Phillip Bell, head of school.
To Scott Shaner, our co-Instructor and UNSW faculty, we say thanks for
his patience and skill in teaching the web development skills that enabled
the students complete their projects. And to our Teaching Assistant, Arvind
Diddi, additional gratitude is in order, for serving as the clean-up hitter
on all technical glitches. Any oversights, omissions, and errors in presenting
the works on this website are my responsibility. For such shortcomings,
I offer my regrets, in the hope that we could be forgiven forattempting
to create Hulk Hogan without steroids