Western Reserve Public Media has a strong relationship with its three consortium universities — The University of Akron, Kent State University and Youngstown State University. We work on a variety of projects together, and by doing so, our collaborations allow us to share expertise, combine resources, create economic efficiencies and provide field experience to students.

The University of Akron

• Western Reserve Public Media maintains a strong relationship with the School of Communication and other departments to create content for Western Reserve PBS (a service of Western Reserve Public Media) and to provide field experience for students and a forum for university projects.

• Phil Hoffman, School of Communication instructor and general manager of ZTV (UA’s student television station), is involved in the recruitment and training of student staff at the Western Reserve Public Media Production Hub.

• In August, we worked with Mr. Hoffman and two students from ZTV to provide Western Reserve PBS reports from the floor of the Democratic National Convention. These aired nightly during our carriage of The NewsHour’s convention coverage.

• UA students work on a variety of other productions for Western Reserve PBS, including our weekly series NewsNight Akron. They have also gained experience through work on documentaries produced for the station by Mr. Hoffman, including A Simple Life, It’s Everything, and Then It’s Gone and If You’re Not Dead, Play!

• In February 2007, Western Reserve Public Media premiered the local independent production The Rise and Fall of the YWCA of Summit County. Produced by Dr. Kathleen L. Endres, distinguished professor of communication at UA, the documentary recounts the 104-year history of the Akron organization. The program was produced with support from the UA School of Communication and the Women’s History Project of the Akron Area.

Kent State University

• One of the best examples of how we effectively collaborate with our consortium universities is found in the Invisible Struggles model. Western Reserve PBS (a service of Western Reserve Public Media) premiered the documentary Invisible Struggles: Stories of Northern Segregation in February 2007, an oral history project created by students and two professors from Kent State University Trumbull Campus — Dr. Molly Merryman, assistant professor of justice studies and the campus coordinator of women’s studies, and Dr. Ken Bindas, professor of history. A follow-up, Invisible Struggles Town Forum, was taped for broadcast at the W.D. Packard Music Hall in Warren and was introduced by KSU President Lester Lefton. The follow-up event brought together Trumbull County residents to talk about issues of race and segregation, past and present. Working together, we were able to generate tremendous awareness of this project and the issues it raised.

• In summer 2007, Western Reserve Public Media teamed up with Kent State-Trumbull’s Dr. Merryman and Dr. Bindas again to present three free workshops to teach community members how to collect videotaped oral histories from local World War II veterans. Participants in the workshops were then invited to videotape oral histories and submit them to the station for possible use in a local documentary and placement in the on-demand archives at the station’s Web site. The project was coordinated with the national release of Ken Burns’ World War II documentary, The War.

• In summer 2008, Western Reserve Public Media joined forces with The Kent State University Press to support the Canton Museum of Art and The Butler Institute of American Art in celebration of the centennial birth year of Ohio artist Clyde Singer. Each organization brought its unique strength to the table: the coordinated exhibitions at the art museums were supported by KSU Press’ publication of the definitive work on the artist, called Clyde Singer’s America, and Western Reserve Public Media produced a documentary for the occasion, Clyde Singer: An American Artist.

• KSU students are involved in the weekly studio production of NewsNight Akron. The Teleproductions Department has ongoing training sessions to keep the NewsNight student production staff at full strength. 

• KSU students work on other Western Reserve PBS productions. Dave McCoy, production manager at KSU Teleproductions, also coordinates student recruitment and training of student staff at the Western Reserve Public Media Production Hub.

• Western Reserve PBS partners with WKSU-FM, the University’s NPR affiliate, to provide content to viewers, in addition to sharing production space in a downtown Akron facility. Most recently, WKSU’s news director provided reports from the floor of the 2008 Republican National Convention, which aired nightly during our carriage of The NewsHour’s convention coverage. In October 2008, WKSU and Western Reserve PBS will co-present Reclaim the Dream in cooperation with the Akron Beacon Journal. This town hall meeting will take a look at the economic challenges facing residents of the greater Akron area. We also provide free tower space and related services to WKSU-FM at our transmitter site in Copley.

• In cooperation with Kent State University, Western Reserve Public Media recently created and delivered two professional development workshops for local educators, each providing one hour of credit from KSU.  Our “Technology in the Classroom” session, called “Collaborative and Communication Tools,” included training in the classroom use of wikis, blogs, podcasting and digital collection of materials. A hybrid online/in-person two-day session called “Digital Storytelling” offered instruction in the classroom use of digital storytelling tools.

• Faculty from KSU attended our statewide conference on educational gaming, “Best Practices and Success Stories in Educational Gaming,” in March 2008. Presenters at the conference included faculty and graduate students from Ohio University in Athens and a representative of the Ohio Supercomputer Network in Columbus. The conference was delivered via distance learning technologies.

• Western Reserve Public Media has been working with the Research Center for Educational Technology (RCET) at Kent State University to explore the uses and influences of technology in the classroom. Local students and their teachers attend the RCET’s AT&T Classroom during their regular school day to work in a technology-rich classroom on projects that are constructivist in approach. An observation room allows researchers to watch the activity and conduct research on which technologies and teaching approaches affect achievement in students. In the 2007-08 academic year, the focus was on data, using Western Reserve Public Media’s multimedia kit Quiz Bus: Dealing With Data as one of the teaching tools. From this, RCET has created an interdisciplinary unit titled “Thinking With Data,” which will be piloted next year at two middle schools. Researchers will follow the progress and measure the results. Western Reserve Public Media’s Educational Services staff helped to refine the lessons in the mathematics section of this project and also trained both teams of educators who will be teaching the material in 2008-09.

Youngstown State University

• Since 2003, Western Reserve PBS (a service of Western Reserve Public Media) has worked with Youngstown State University to produce 2010 Moving Ahead: A Forum for Reporting Progress. This series focuses on the Youngstown 2010 revitalization project and functions as a “report-to-the-public” mechanism for the project. YSU is a content advisor on the project and provides campus resources for live broadcasts. WYSU-FM, the university’s NPR affiliate, simulcasts the 2010 Moving Ahead broadcasts and provides production support.

• Western Reserve PBS and YSU hosted one of Gov. Ted Strickland’s “Conversations on Education” at Kilcawley Center in September 2008. Western Reserve PBS taped the meeting for later broadcast, which was followed up by a half-hour of analysis by local educators.

• As part of Western Reserve Public Media’s yearlong War and Peace Project in 2007, we worked with YSU’s Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and KSU’s Symposium on Democracy committee to create events around the national broadcast of America at a Crossroads. This collection of 11 documentaries explored the challenges confronting a post-9/11 world. Events on the two campuses included a film festival of selected documentaries from the series, appearances by some of the filmmakers and a public forum on issues raised in the films.

• In cooperation with YSU’s Metro Campus in Boardman, Western Reserve Public Media’s Department of Education Services offers accessible professional development workshops for educators in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.

• Western Reserve Public Media Director of Education Jeff Good is serving as the instructor of Technologies for Teachers in the fall 2008 semester through YSU’s Department of Educational Foundation, Research, Technology and Leadership.

Western Reserve Public Media staff in higher education

• Director of Education Jeff Good is a Limited Service Faculty Member at YSU

• Production Manager Duilio Mariola has taught Video Field Production and served as a producer in residence at KSU

• Vice President of Marketing & Development Lisa Martinez taught freshman English at KSU

• Station Manager Bill O’Neil taught classes in the Radio and TV department at UA.