Students walking by the main Alliot Student Center lobby on their way to late-afternoon dinner one evening this spring, stopped spontaneously to watch absorbing big-screen samplings of documentary films that senior journalism majors created for their capstone projects.
Upstairs in the Vermont room, other well-dressed seniors exhibited original web and print publications they had created, many accompanied by posters and pamphlets. Earnestly and expertly, they described their findings to a parade of visitors.
As always for this festive and popular annual Journalism Department event, the Vermont Room was noisy with media and conversation and filled shoulder-to-shoulder with professors from most departments along with administrators, students and family of presenters.
Among the documentary film topics were composting, food politics, the treatment of mental illness in Vermont, alcoholic blackouts, YouTube and its evolving role in education, children's literature, society's dependence on plastics, and gender role-playing with a focus on Burlington-area drag performers.
Most films were created by groups of two or three students, who took turns explaining what it takes to make feature-length films that in many cases ran longer than an hour. Some producers described traveling hundreds of miles for interviews, like the creators of the film on blackouts from drinking, who interviewed 400 people, mostly through email, and drove to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., to consult experts.
Besides displaying in-depth reporting skills on complex topics, the documentaries also were showcases for the new-media talents of their creators, many incorporating animation with slick audio and video editing by computer. Several students interviewed Saint Michael's professors from other departments as their experts, including Michael Bosia of political science, Robert Letovsky of business, James Byrne of religious studies and Crystal L'Hote of philosophy. The films were alternately humane, hard-hitting, informative and whimsical.
That was true of the web sites and print books upstairs, too. In their examination of development in Vermont and its effects on rural landscapes, Courtney Lamdin and Erik Wells, both Vermont natives, provided links from photos of their interview subjects to play videos of question-answer sessions. Major political players in the state's landmark Act 250 development process and landowners were among their sources.
Gary Bilotti, grandfather of Redmond Deck '10, had traveled from Montana to visit and see all the projects, and said that as a veteran teacher he was extremely impressed by student enthusiasm, quality of research and attendance by professors from all disciplines since that imparted a special close sense of community. His grandson was in a group that documented in their film the importance of reading for children in a technological age.
On his rounds to talk with presenters, President John J. Neuhauser spent several minutes in deep conversation with most. One was Leanne Ouimet, who did her project on the struggling entertainment genre of soap operas. Ouimet said she would like to find a job in some aspect of that industry.
"I'm most impressed with how much passion the students have for the work they were doing," the president said. "They're really involved and there's quite a bit of writing, and they really feel as if this is important work. We've created a lot of missionaries here. It's very impressive scholarship, and I think this is one of the best things we do."
A list of this year's journalism Senior Projects:
BOOKS
Bridging the Gap: Perspectives on Taking a "Year Out" Before College
- Mary Cate Connors
City Inside a City: A Look at Airport Culture
- Stephanie Smetana
City of Uncertainty: Understanding Why Young College Graduates Move to New York
- Sheila Catanzarita & Tessa Schraven
Conception Perception: Redefining Reproductive Choice in a Global and Social Context
- Karin Krisher
Jackpot: Lottery Fortunes and the People Who've Won Them
- Nick Daley
Last Chance for Mary Jane: A Modern Marijuana Movement
- Andrew Parise
Playing to Learn: An Examination of Using Video Games in the Classroom
- Brad Cole
Unstable Foundation: Growing Up in Households with Mental Illness
- Erin Blair
FILM
Cat Out of the Hat: Children's Literature in the 21st Century
- Mary Nolan, Kurstin Reuschel and Redmond Deck
Dirty Burlington: Culture and Image in the 05401
- Abby Robitaille
Do YouTube? YouTube's New Visual Culture
- Jon Ketchum, Nick Briggs and Nick Babbitt
Food Life: From Seed to Shelf
- Brielle Domings, Kelly Huettner and Sarah Coghlan
Life's a Drag: Drag Queens, Drag Kings, and Identity
- Erin Millard, Kelley Ruch and Alida Destrempe
Misunderstood: Vermont's Approach to Mental Illness
- Juli Bongiorno, Kaitlin Couillard and Cailey McDermott
Our Plastic Footprint: An Addiction We Can't Shake
- Emily MacKenzie and Veronica Reino
Out Black: Alcohol, Excess, and Blackout Drinking
- Deanna Kaiser and Katie Robichaud
Waste as a Verb: Acts of Composting in Vermont
- Chris White
WEB
Changing Vermont: Rural Landscapes vs. Economic Development
- Courtney Lamdin and Erik Wells
Living in Between Cultures: The Challenges Immigrant Women Face while Adapting to U.S. Life
- Kristen Hartwell
MTV-Reality: How MTV is Killing our Culture
- Meredith Falzone & Amanda Pelley
New Directions in Photojournalism
- Mike Connors
Seeing the World through Travelers' Experiences
- Jessica Maurice
Slippery Soaps: An Investigation into the Dying Genre of Daytime Soap Operas
- Leanne Ouimet
The Loss of Innocence: Gender and Racial Stereotypes in Disney Animated Films
- Jade Csizmesia & Macki Nguyen
The Second Time Around: The People and Products of Second Hand Stores
- Kate Reynolds