Getting ready for primetime

The College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences (CHBS) building was officially unveiled to the public in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 16.

The new building contains a mixture of both new and upgraded tools that will aid and increase student learning. In the colleges’ new home, there is a forensic lab, a courtroom, an emergency operations center, a watch center, a vivarium and a new television studio. 

West Bowers, a media studies professor within the School of Communication at Radford University, is excited about the new TV studio.

“Students will be prepared for the modern work environment by working on professional grade equipment,” Bowers said. “Students will have additional editing availability due to the extra editing bays and the shared server. We also have Newscutter software, which will be helpful to our journalism students.”

Everything is now run through a shared server, which eliminates scheduling conflicts found in the old editing bays. Students are able to work on their projects in any of the new editing bays.

“The new editing labs will have brand new Mac Pros and the latest versions of video and audio editing programs Avid and Premiere,” Bowers said. “The new editing labs will have a shared server so you can edit from any of the 10 editing bays, making it easier for students to work on their projects.”

The focal point of the new studio is compatibility between every piece of hardware and software.

“Each new piece in the new studio is designed to work together, so it should cut down on problems and get us a better quality image in the end,” Bowers said. “The new studio also has a curved wall painted as green-screen so that we can have seamless green screen production.”

The old studio had a three-camera setup with a Tricaster that did all the switching and processing for the TV studio.

The TV studio has professional-level cameras along with a dedicated switcher. Not only is the new studio modernized, but it also has a robotic camera that is governable from the control room.

The studio will tentatively be showcased in Oct.