Media Arts Students Designing Projects Statewide Through Summer Internships
New Mexico Highlands University media arts student interns are designing multi-media projects throughout New Mexico this summer for museums, other cultural institutions, and a national astronomy observatory.
The paid summer internship program is a partnership between the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) and media arts.
“These Highlands’ media arts students are our future for the museum profession in terms of using new technologies to present exciting exhibits of our collections,” said Mimi Roberts, director of media projects for the Department of Cultural Affairs. “The feedback we get about the quality of the students’ work is that it looks like professionals who have been working in the field for two or three years.
“The media arts faculty deserves a lot of credit for creating a first-rate program. They set really high standards and challenge their students to do quality work,” Roberts said.
“These internships through DCA provide a bridge between a student-centered university environment and a professional environment that gives our students valuable experience working with cultural institutions in New Mexico,” said Lauren Addario, media arts instructor and internship coordinator. “Our media arts students are learning how to be voices for their own culture, which is powerful.” – Recent media arts graduate Angelo Mitchell and student Melissa Marquez are working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) site in Socorro, N.M. They will develop a promotional packet, virtual tour, and design posters for the visitors center for the Expanded Very Large Array Project, a new radio telescope with unprecedented sensitivity, frequency coverage, and imaging capability. – Melissa Marquez will work with curator Merry Scully at the Governor’s Gallery to create informational panels for the exhibit ‘Play it Louder,’ which highlights Alexander Girard’s collection of musical instruments from around the world. – The museum is sponsoring two internships for graduate students Cabrini Martinez and Virginia Marrujo to produce a Web site for one of the museum’s inaugural exhibits, ‘Fashioning New Mexico,’ with an online archive for viewing the exhibit virtually. Media arts students created key elements of the exhibit in 2009. – The NHCC Education Department is sponsoring an internship for Rianne Trujillo, who will be working on a variety of multi-media projects this summer. — Students Ben Jeremiah and Becca Glenn will work with the City of Las Vegas Museum to document a series of oral histories by local Las Vegans. The museum will display the stories during Las Vegas Heritage Week in August. – Graduate student Kenneth Chombah is working with NMDCA to rebuild the Center for Cultural Technology Web site, which features work done by the university’s media arts interns and is a resource for the public. – Is sponsoring an internship for recent graduate Devyn Dennison, who will document the 14th annual Sheep is Life celebration, and create a short video describing the importance of sheep to the Navajo culture. — Is sponsoring an internship for graduate student Jeana Francis, who will help design a Web site for the museum’s history of computing exhibit. – Ben Jeremiah will create a video, ‘Restoration through Utilization & Educational Outreach.’ He will go onsite to document methods used for forest thinning, including how thinning can benefit the forest as well as contribute to sustainable product development. – Veronica Black, an undergraduate, and Stacy Romero, a graduate student, will research and prototype animated e-publishing documents so DCA can offer this new technology to various host cultural institutions.