On Campus
Fully loaded multimedia lab opens at Douglass library
When Sharon A. Fordham was a student at Douglass College in the early 1970s, computers were nearly as big as some dorm rooms. Students used typewriter-like devices to punch holes in hundreds of computer cards and feed them, in obsessively correct order, into a 12-foot-by-five-foot iron IBM behemoth. Fordham laughs now, but back then it was serious business. “If you ever dropped the cards out of order, you paid dearly.”
Most Rutgers students today are unaware that the earliest computers were far too large for a desktop or a backpack. They have been producing PowerPoint and audio-video presentations since grammar school, making films and posting to YouTube and MySpace for years. If their college experience is to grab hold of them and transform their lives – not to mention prepare them for a profession – it must incorporate the most advanced technology available. Fordham, a successful business executive, investor, and theatrical producer, understands this. She wants Rutgers graduates to have up-to-the-minute computer skills, regardless of their professional aspirations.
With a generous donation to the university libraries, she has funded the creation of the Sharon A. Fordham Multimedia Resources Laboratory at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library on the Douglass Campus. The lab has a dozen new MacPro desktops loaded with enough high-end software to make the most demanding computer geek swoon. Instead of conventional written papers, students will be able to create multimedia projects incorporating written text, music, video, choreography, and graphical design. While the lab is handy to students at the Douglass Campus and Mason Gross School of the Arts, Fordham hopes it will be used by students and faculty in the sciences, humanities, and business as well.
“I want to send a message to all the undergraduates and graduates that these disciplines overlap with almost anything you’re going to do,” said Fordham in an interview following the opening reception of the new lab January 30.
Fordham’s own career path illustrates her point. The central New Jersey native was a highly accomplished classical clarinetist when she entered Douglass. She majored in history and political science and added some computer classes. After graduating in 1975, she headed to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she acquired a master’s in business degree, a fearlessness about new technology, and a lifelong fascination with the synergy between technology and the arts.
In her professional life, Fordham created pathbreaking Internet marketing sites for Nabisco and Weight Watchers before forming her own investment firm, where she routinely produces multimedia marketing materials and presentations for potential investors. Lately returning to the arts, she helped produce the highly successful stage musical A Tale of Two Cities in Sarasota, Florida, this past fall. The production team hopes to open on Broadway later this year.
At the opening of the lab last month, faculty members test drove some of the most powerful computers on campus. They donned thickly padded head phones to explore Sibelius software, which allows users to compose and play back musical notation, and refine, hear, scan, and print musical scores. Others played with choreography software that can visualize and notate dance steps. The new lab has a small, cork dance floor where dance students can execute and videotape dance movements and convert them into standard dance notation using Dance Forms software. “You can sit at the computer and step two feet in front of it and dance,” said Jeff Friedman, assistant professor and doctoral researcher of dance at Mason Gross. “That’s incredibly precious real estate for us.”
For filmmakers there are Apple’s Final Cut Pro Suite, the professional standard in video creation and editing, and Final Draft software for writing screenplays incorporating basic camera shot description. High-end video cameras, scanners, printers, and microphones round out the inventory, along with 30-inch monitors and a large projection screen.
The lab will be open on an appointment-only basis for a few months, until the library can add staff to work during regular library hours.
At least one faculty member has already used the lab to leverage grant money for a multimedia project. Mary Hawkesworth, professor of women’s and gender studies, has secured $20,000 from various university offices to enable 10 students to participate in the World Women’s Conference in Madrid in July. The students will present papers at the conference and record interviews with women from around the world. When they return, they will use the lab to produce a short video about their trip.
“They can’t wait until we get these digital video cameras in their hands and let them loose in Spain,” Hawkesworth said at the opening last month.
For Fordham, the lab has produced a bit of tech envy, since it surpasses what she has at home. “I’ll just have to drop in and visit,” she said.