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Stay tuned: New broadcast club takes to the air
By Beth Stafford
Spurred on by a group of energetic UWM students, the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication has teamed up with Instructional Media Services to help launch the new Broadcasting Club on campus.
Membership is open to all registered UWM students, regardless of major, class standing, or area of interest. Club members will be allowed to use the I&MT television studio and broadcasting equipment to create programs that will air on the campus cable system.
Sarah Scarpace, the group's president-elect, described the new club as "a tremendous opportunity to gain hands-on experience in journalism."
While there have been successful broadcast clubs on other UW System campuses for years, this club is a "first" at UWM. The key is the partnership forged between an academic department and a nonacademic unit by Mark Zoromski, journalism and mass communication senior lecturer, and John Grozik, director of instructional media services. Zoromski and Grozik serve as co-advisers to the club.
Grozik knows how valuable this kind of experience can be for students - he was adviser to the broadcast club at Marquette University for 13 years. For the UWM club, he will open the studios and equipment located in UWM's Cunningham Hall to Broadcast Club students every Friday from 1-5 p.m.
The students plan to develop ongoing, weekly studio-based news and sports television programs, using the I&MT studio as a learning laboratory. Students will learn TV production by operating cameras and audio boards. Grozik and his staff will be supervising behind the scenes.
While the club's initial run during the spring semester is viewed as a pilot program, all concerned hope that it will continue. The club, funded by the UWM Student Association like other official campus organizations, plans to do fund-raising. The Broadcast Club also received a grant from the Wisconsin Broadcast Association through Zoromski's efforts.
In addition to studio-based news and sportscasts, the students plan live and tape-delayed play-by-play television and Internet broadcasts of UWM sporting events. They also would like to serve the campus by broadcasting debates by contenders for student government positions.
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Originally posted in the March 2004 edition of UWM Report.
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