On April 6, the School of the Arts, Media and Culture (SAMC) marked its official launch at Trinity Western University.
“These are exciting days to be launching a new school, a new way of seeing, thinking [and] working,” said David Squires, dean of SAMC. Squires also said that the launch of SAMC will be exciting for professors and students.
The main vision for the new School is to offer students professional degree programs with interdisciplinary courses.
“Alongside the development of new professional degrees in which students are mentored by working professionals in their discipline, we are also transitioning from a diverse group of departments with a common administration to a single school with many programmatic expressions and a greater concern for interdisciplinary connections,” said Squires.
Educators around the province, and outside of TWU, have looked at SAMC programs and have mentioned that they will be strong programs to create leaders.
“SAMC uses positive mentoring within a community of learning to nurture students into transformers of culture,” said Squires.
Squires has been working at TWU for 15 years and initially never saw SAMC coming, but now that it’s here, he feels that the arts, communications, music and theatre departments are more unified.
“The launch of a School of the Arts, Media, and Culture at TWU is really a momentous event,” said Squires. “While we honour the efforts of our forebears at this remarkable university – who 50 years ago dreamed and prayed into being a college, later to become a university – and especially as we acknowledge the breadth and depth of courses and programs in various arts, media and culture disciplines which many colleagues have laboured to develop and shape over several decades – yet we now stand looking to a very different future.”
In the fall, students can get a taste of what the School is about if they take SAMC 111. “SAMC has new foundational courses in place for fall, bringing together across traditional disciplinary lines to engage critical issues in the arts,” said Squires.
For senior students, interdisciplinary “capstone” courses are being worked on, as well as travel studies and experiential projects. Also, courses are transferable for SAMC.
“We at SAMC are creative thinkers who believe in a dynamic curriculum in an ever-changing culture,” said Squires.
To find out more information about SAMC, visit their website at www.twu.ca/academics/samc.
