Adham Center Opens its Doors to Undergraduates

In a transformation two years in the making, the Adham Center has dramatically revised its academic mission to provide full support for the undergraduate Journalism and Mass Communication majors who want to specialize in broadcasting.

This academic year (2004-5) is a year of transition, with the revised courses supported by the Adham Center restricting the number of undergraduates enrolled until the final class of two-year masters students finish their course work.

Adham Center Director S. Abdallah Schleifer worked with individual instructors and Department Chair Hussein Amin to fashion a new undergraduate curriculum out of the materials of the older two-year masters program. Schleifer continues to teach the graduate students while monitoring and occasionally co-teaching the new undergraduate program.

"Right now we are running two sections for each of the core courses," Schleifer told AdhamOnline. "That means that over this academic year (2004-05) we will have handled a little more than 60 students, as well the 13 graduate students in the final academic year of what had been a two-year MA program which handled an average of 23 graduate students a year." Schleifer added that during next academic year (2005-06) the Center will support core undergraduate broadcast journalism courses enrolling approximately one hundred students a year in each course.

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The introduction of a new syllabus and new methods of teaching coincides with the transformation of the Center's Sony Gallery for Photography into a camera and editing lab. The Sony Gallery has been re-opened in newly allocated space formerly known as the Ewart Gallery.

The new TV news lab is used intensively for instruction and practice sessions by the JRMC 441 course and as a classroom and audio-visual lab for the JRMC 337 class. It is equipped with eighteen stations allowing the students to shoot with digital video cameras and edit on computers using the latest non-linear software.

"The hands-on approach and the chance to use state-of-the-art equipment is a valuable asset for any student intending to work in the field of television journalism," Sandle said.

The shift to an undergraduate focus does not mean that the Adham Center has completely abandoned its commitment to post-graduate study, Schleifer said. In place of the two-year master's degree, those who have not majored in the new, revitalized broadcast journalism specialization as undergraduates can enroll in a one-year Graduate Diploma course built around the undergraduate courses, but with the addition of research projects for diploma candidates.

This program should prove attractive to AUCians who did not take the new broadcast journalism specialization as undergraduates, as well as to graduate students from other universities, Schleifer said.

Why did the Adham Center choose to undergo reinvention as a center supporting an undergraduate academic program? Schleifer says there are several reasons. The first is the proliferation of satellite channels in Egypt and the expansion of the bureaus of Arab satellite channels that are headquartered elsewhere but increasingly reliant on Cairo for news, public affairs talk shows, and other programming. That has meant a greater demand in the industry for students with Adham-quality training.

Secondly, the department as a whole is up for accreditation by the relevant American academic body. On a preliminary survey undertaken more than five years ago, the accrediting committee visiting AUC and the Journalism and Mass Communications department ranked the Adham Center academic program as the most successful aspect of an overall weak department performance. By bringing the expertise and technical facilities of the Adham Center into the undergraduate program, the chances of the department being accredited are greatly increased.

-The Editors