By Following students expressing frustration regarding course work intensity, Department of Cinematic Arts Chair Adam Moore announced he is stepping down and will leave Long Beach State on Oct. 18.
Taking over as interim chair is professor of cinematography, David Waldman, who is also the associate chair of the department and head of the cinematography track.
Before Moore’s departure from the university, he held a town hall meeting inviting students to bring forth their concerns to him and Waldman.
On Sept. 19, Cinematic Arts students created a change.org petition demanding change to the new CINE 305 course curriculum that was instituted earlier this semester.
The petition highlights issues with the courses alleged unmanageable workload requiring a substantial amount of outside class time. It currently has 328 signatures.
“This is detrimental to CINE students because it allows no space for students working part-time, students with familial responsibilities, or students with ongoing health issues,” the petition reads.
The CINE 305: Production Workshop 1 course focuses on narrative filmmaking and involves small group work with hands-on experience with key production roles. The course is worth three units.
In addition, students shared frustrations regarding the immense workload in the one unit course, CINE 272: Editing 1 Lab. This course has students learn post-production workflow and Adobe Premiere Pro software.
At the town hall meeting, Waldman said that one of the main reasons that the faculty voted for the new CINE 305 curriculum was due to the inequitable components of the prior curriculum.
“Scriptive narrative production was limited to 40 students a year, every single one of you feels like you would’ve been one of those 40,” Waldom said. “…the problem was every year there were people standing on the outside with their hands pressed against the glass, heartbroken that you did not get into that cohort.”
Third-year film major, Ella Kaplan is currently enrolled in CINE 305 and she said the new curriculum has caused a lot of chaos with prerequisite requirements.
“Because we started our freshmen and the beginning of our sophomore year in the old curriculum and are now getting on our feet with this new curriculum, a lot of people are finding stress in the course load,” Kaplan said.
Students were frustrated by their professors’ responses to concerns about the workload.
Students said that CINE professors have made statements including, “If you can’t do it, drop the class,” and “If you guys miss an assignment, might as well drop the class.”
T Lopez, a third-year film major, said that she has been frustrated with how messy this semester has turned out to be for her as a result of the new curriculum.
“It just feels like there’s one problem after another,” Lopez said. “…it’s not fair at all, that people like me coming in with no experience at all, are expected to fill in the blanks. I don’t appreciate being used as an academic guinea pig,” Lopez said.
Lopez said that she is happy that Moore and Waldman were willing to listen to students’ frustrations regarding the courses.
Waldman said that CINE 272, specifically, was meant to be a “bare bones” intro hands-on lab.
Gabe Thomas, a second-year film major, said a lot of the 272 students are also in the 305 course. To him, it appears that nobody is happy.
Thomas said that he and other cinematic art students had met with Moore prior to his announcement to speak about their concerns. He found it strange that Moore announced that he was leaving CSULB days later.
“I don’t think that the head of the department leaving in the middle of a very turbulent semester is going to make things better,” Thomas said.
Thomas doesn’t feel like the town hall meeting helped and expected a bigger turnout from students.
Moore said that any issues that students share will aid in evolving the courses in the future.
“You got screwed over because we changed the curriculum and you had to catch up to it,” Moore said. “I’m sorry it happened, however the reason we put you into the new curriculum is because we think it’s better and you’re going to be better filmmakers than students who graduated before you.”
