Facility to Be Named for Late Assemblyman Alex DeCroce – Posted 1/30/15
The Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders has announced the allocation of $1 million from the county’s 2015 capital budget to the County College of Morris (CCM) “Visioning the Future” capital campaign for a new college Media Center.
“Thanks to the generous funding by the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders and the fundraising of the CCM Foundation, the college’s Media Center will be the latest facility to offer our students superior education and training in the field of Media Studies,” said Dr. Edward J. Yaw, president of CCM. “We are excited to be able to bring such a high level of technology to our students and the college community.”
“Visioning the Future” is the title of the foundation’s capital campaign that has raised more than $900,000 in individual, corporate, private foundation and public support. The new facility will be named in honor of late New Jersey Assemblyman Alex DeCroce, a former Morris County Freeholder, CCM Trustee and Board chair.
“We are most grateful to the Freeholders for their support and are thrilled to be able to create a state-of-the-art broadcasting facility to meet the needs of not only our students, but the community at-large,” said Joseph Vitale, president of the CCM Foundation. The foundation is the fundraising arm of the college.
The new facility on the college’s Randolph campus, located at 214 Center Grove Road, will contain equipment that will upgrade the current technology from analog to high definition/digital. A teaching studio and support facilities, including a control room and an edit suite, will be built. A second professional studio, distinct from the teaching studio, will also be constructed and surrounded by a scenery/work room, a mechanical room, a technical engineering room, a studio control room, a studio editing room, a secondary production room and a “green room” for on-air guests. Parallel equipment ranging from HD/digital cameras and fiber optic cabling to state-of-the-art mixing and editing equipment will be installed in both the teaching and professional studios.
The modern facility with brand-new technology and formats will prepare students to successfully enter the media industry, as well as give them the experience necessary to transfer to four-year academic programs.
The Media Center functions as a TV studio and a classroom for Broadcasting Arts and Technology and Communication students, who use the facility to develop media skills and receive hands-on technical training in such areas as camera work, lighting, sound, staging, editing and graphics.
While the main focus of the Media Center is CCM students, the facility is also a vital resource for faculty, staff and the community at large, providing multimedia support for everything from classroom presentations, audio and television productions, sound and video for computer programs, and on-campus conferences.
The Media Center in 2014 provided about 500 services for the campus and the community, including nonprofits, government organizations, the Morris County government and the New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs. The Media Center is also partnering with Verizon-NJ on its Community Access program to provide HD resources to municipalities within Morris County to create original programming.
A business plan is being developed to make the new Alex DeCroce Media Center available to the area’s corporate and business community, which would pay a fee to use the facility for original productions, with that fee dedicated to the Media Center’s further development.
