This is the sixth in a series of department profiles featured in News Pulse throughout the year.

Instructional Media Services applies expertise

By Sharon Feder '06

The members of Instructional Media Services (left to right) are Michael Koczanski, Diane Strauss, Doug Short, Jade Wesdorp, Leslie Williams, Emily Trapp and Joe D'Agostino (not pictured).

The office of Instructional Media Services (IMS) sees itself as a proactive entity in a changing technological world.

The team, which is responsible for providing instructional media and technological support to faculty for classroom instruction, keeps track of changes and improvements in technological media and discovers how they can apply it on campus.

"We constantly read trade magazines and attend conferences," said Emily Trapp, director of IMS.

Trapp is among four full-time and two parttime IMS staff members: Mike Koczanski, Diane Strauss, Doug Short, Joe D'Agostino, Leslie Williams, and Jade Wesdorp.

Through their efforts, IMS has transformed 50 percent of the classrooms on campus into technologically-equipped rooms.

A year from now they aim to increase that number to 73 percent, eventually formatting 85 percent of classrooms on campus with technological means.

But this is not the only campus business that IMS is responsible for. They also offer their services as extension and distance learning providers to Sullivan County Community College, the University at Albany, University of Buffalo and the Southwind Community Center in Middletown.

In addition to handling instructional media and technological support, IMS, in conjunction with the Office of Public Affairs, produces "On Campus at SUNY New Paltz" once weekly. Thus far, IMS has produced 130 half-hour segments of the show.

Recently the program has been added on the New York Network SUNY television station, which increases viewership from five mid- Hudson counties to 700,000 viewers statewide.

But viewership isn't the only addition. The staff of "On Campus at SUNY New Paltz" have been collaborating with SUNY TV to produce a new pilot titled SUNY Arts Profile.

New Paltz will be the first campus profiled for the show, which will air in January 2006. The episode features footage from the New Paltz production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," including rehearsals, interviews with the director, designers and students.

In making the show, the IMS staff taped rehearsals of the play and a three-person crew from SUNY TV came to film the production.

Shot like a documentary, the show may eventually appear on PBS.

"We have so much talent on this campus," said Trapp. "Having this relationship will open more avenues for other programs as well."

MAY 9, 2005
Volume 3, Issue 9

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