Technology has allowed for many world changes in recent years. Third-graders are carrying their cell phones to class, lambs are being cloned, and students at DU have the opportunity to take a class taught by a professor on the East Coast.
Congress and the Presidency in the Television Age, in its fourth year taught at the Cable Center, allows DU students to learn about politics and media through courses taught digitally by Steve Scully, the senior producer of C-SPAN, based at the C-SPAN studios in Washington, D.C.
The class, offered Tuesdays and Thursdays, is taught in a television studio at the Cable Center on the north end of campus, complete with remote control cameras and microphones. The approximate 25 students currently enrolled in the course converse with Scully via satellite, and watch a large screen in the front of the class as he responds to their comments.
“It’s really like you are talking to (Scully) there,” said Fred Hobbs, marketing director of the Cable Center. “And because C-SPAN has political figures and others, they can interact with the DU students too.”
The class has already had the opportunity to listen and interview such media figures as MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews, NBC news anchor Brian Williams, and Jack Valenti, the former CEO of the Motion Pictures Association of America.
“The class provides an opportunity for a 19-year-old from Denver to talk to Chris Matthews, a top journalist known around the nation,” said Hobbs.
The class, anchored at DU, currently has two other universities joining the lectures. “They bring a different perspective to the class,” said Hobbs. Another university plans to join the class in the fall.
Aside from adding other schools to the class, other plans are also expected for the class.
“We are in the very early process of gathering our materials for the course,” said Hobbs. “We want to create DVDs of the lectures to send to other colleges and even high schools. We want to take an exciting opportunity and spread it further.”
Though listed as a communications course, Congress and the Presidency in the Television Age is open to all students, regardless of major.
“It’s about politics and how politics and media have come together in the past 50 years,” said Hobbs. “It has been universally incredibly popular and has gotten an incredible response.”
