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<\/a>Rhetoric major Joshua Ajamu ’14 of Breinigsville, Pa., has found a second home in Pettigrew’s new Digital Media Studios. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
Now a rhetoric major and president of BCTV, he wants to create documentaries. \u201cI like to speak with people and learn about their stories \u2014 who they are, what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students like Ajamu can now tell more stories, and tell them better, thanks to Bates’ new Digital Media Studios, part of the college’s $1.2 million renovation of Pettigrew Hall.<\/p>\n
While the story of Pettigrew\u2019s revival has a happy ending \u2014 a celebration on Jan. 10 marked the building\u2019s official reopening and dedication of the studios \u2014 the way this story begins is somewhat unfortunate.<\/p>\n
Last February extensive flooding in Pettigrew displaced dozens of faculty and staff for the balance of the academic year and destroyed the college’s existing space for digital media production.<\/p>\n
Post-flood, a steering committee of Bates faculty and staff convened immediately to assess not just the need but the opportunity that the flood had created to improve Pettigrew, a traditional mid-20th-century academic building built in 1953.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Pamela Johnson Reynolds ’67 poses with President Clayton Spencer at the January celebration of the renovation of Pettigrew Hall and dedication of the Digital Media Studios, funded by Reynolds’ leadership gift. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
Designed by Bates faculty and staff and executed by Hebert Construction of Lewiston, the renovation was completed in time for the start of the 2013 fall semester.<\/p>\n
Funded by philanthropy and insurance proceeds, the building updates include improved classroom and office spaces as well as departmental lounges that serve as gathering spaces for students and colleagues. The previously dark and cramped Theater Lab has been expanded and outfitted with new technology and improved acoustics.<\/p>\n
“An unbelievably happy marriage of donor intent and institutional need.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While the entire building got a facelift, Pettigrew’s digital production space got a real makeover.<\/p>\n
That’s because, says project manager Chris Streifel, \u201cthere was a universal recognition of the role that digital media production plays within the Pettigrew community,\u201d which includes the dance, rhetoric and theater departments, as well as the Bates Dance Festival. The building is also home to staff of the college’s Information and Library Services who oversee software development and implementation.<\/p>\n
Propelled by a leadership gift from Pamela Johnson Reynolds ’67, the new digital studios, said President Clayton Spencer, represent \u201can unbelievably happy marriage of donor intent and institutional need.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an ever-changing world, and helping Bates students build the skills to navigate it is truly an honor.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In her remarks at the January event, Reynolds, accompanied by her family and a number of Bates classmates, recalled visiting the campus for the first time with her father. Sitting in their car after meeting with then Dean of Admission Milt Lindholm ’35, her father turned to her and said, “Solid people.”<\/p>\n
Reynolds agrees, “You can’t have a great institution like Bates without solid people.”<\/p>\n
She went on to contrast the \u201csimple and tidy world\u201d of Bates in the 1960s with the rush of information and technology that follows today\u2019s students \u2014 from personal computers in their dorms to smartphones in their back pockets.<\/p>\n
Reynolds said, \u201cAs I look around this facility, built by a flood and a little help from me, I see that the skills developed here will present Bates students in the best light and allow them to maximize their post-graduate experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an ever-changing world, and helping Bates students build the skills to navigate it is truly an honor.”<\/p>\n
The studios were designed for collaboration. A central hall connects staff offices to an iMac computer lab outfitted for group projects; state-of-the-art editing suites for audio and video; and the Multimedia Workspace \u2014 flexible and creative space for recording everything from interviews to stop-motion animation.<\/p>\n
Though it can\u2019t be seen or felt, the new high-speed fiber optic network may be the most critical improvement, says Scott Tiner, assistant director for digital media and event support.<\/p>\n
\u201cDigital media files are huge \u2014 in the gigabytes,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cStudents and faculty would previously have to wait five, 10, even 15 minutes to copy their files from and to a server in order to edit them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now they can edit directly off the server from any location in the Digital Media Studios.<\/p>\n