We thus hope to create an interdisciplinary Center that will raise awareness of UVM’s strengths in this crucial area internally and externally and foster sophisticated cross-disciplinary discussion and exploration of media, culture, and society at UVM, in the State of Vermont, and beyond.

Approach: UVM is not in a position to create a new department or stand-alone research institute from the ground up. Yet it is uniquely well-suited for a research Center that would allow for highly interdisciplinary approaches tied together by humanistic concerns. Typical departments and institutes in these areas are tightly focused on narrow questions and tied to very specific disciplinary and professional agendas. Because UVM is in part a state research university and in part a small liberal arts college, it is an ideal place to foster research and discussion that on the one hand, deals with contemporary issues of political and economic urgency, but on the other, puts these issues in larger context. The Center will be a place that illuminates the forest, not just the trees.

Benefits to UVM: The Center will enliven UVM’s intellectual environment, enhancing undergraduate, graduate, and faculty experience. It will uniquely blend cutting-edge, high quality critical scholarship with contemporary issues of great concern to the worlds of government and business; it will help put UVM on the map in this area, and thus enhance the University’s prestige and its ability to draw high quality students.

Benefits to those outside UVM: The Center will sponsor research, speakers, and panel discussions on matters ranging from literacy to internet policy -- matters of great contemporary concern to the worlds of business and government -- in a neutral, reflective context free of pressures typical of the "outside world." In addition, UVM graduates will be more aware of media and culture, especially in terms of the "big picture," i.e., in terms of broad ethical, social, and political implications.

Resource requirements: Most of the resources will come from simply channeling and coordinating things that are already going on within existing departments: providing encouragement to ongoing faculty research in the area through informal interaction and formal colloquia and panel discussions, pooling departmental funds for invited speakers, and sharing information with students and each other about the content and character of our existing courses in the area.

Ideally, effective development of a Center would involve a two-course reduction for a director, a .5 FTE (half-time) secretary, an office with a modest operating budget, and a speaker’s budget: roughly $25,000/yr. Our expectation is that a Center will make it easier to get outside grants, so the most urgent financial need is support for a start-up period of two to five years.