hi BELMONT UNIVERSITY 1200 Bont Balad Davie THS72257 Senoor of Socrat Sciences phon 615-460-5413 oe 16-40-5997 Neda States Communzaton Studies Hstoy Pala! Skene saeiogy ene April 16, 2010 To the dissertation committee of Angela Smith: Angela Smith is an invaluable member of the Media Studies Department and the New Century Journalism Program, in particular. She was hired to provide technical, design and production support for our student media, and the improvement was fast and impressive. However, I saw only the finished product in that first year, and didn’t have a good handle on how effective Angela was in teaching and mentoring the student media staff. I got my chance when I asked her to team teach Introduction to Media Technology, a first-year required course in the journalism major. The course goal was to teach fundamental visual presentation skills in traditional print media and new media, My expertise ended where new media began. Angela, I quickly discovered, was an expert in it all. The most pleasant realization, though, was seeing how effective Angela was as a teacher of often complicated tasks and skills, She could inspire the students to strive beyond “acceptable” and reach for “outstanding,” Since then I have seen this same approach with her students at www. belmontvision.com, with the traditional Belmont Vision newspaper and with the Visual Joumalism class, Angela served as instructor/supervisor for the first Senior Project to come out of the New Century Journalism Program, an historical documentary titled “They March,” spotlighting previously unreported activities involving the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins in the Civil Rights movement. In this endeavor, Angela taught various methods of historical documentation, including archival work and one-on-one interviews with key players in that movement. She also taught video and audio gathering techniques and final editing skills. She has done this with several other Senior Projects in the last couple years. Angela is patient and not afraid to let her students make mistakes and discover their own remedies. When meeting with prospective students, it's a given that 1 will point to projects or work done by Angela's “kids,” as I call them, ‘es and expertise in further detail at your will be happy to discuss Angela’s abi convenience. Sincerely, oa SY ‘Thom Storey, Chair Department of Media Studies Associate Dean, Schoo! of Social Sciences ‘mumbelmont.edu