SOUTH KINGSTOWN – The University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media officially unveiled its state-of-the-art $1.25 million Broadcast Center on Friday at URI’s Kingston campus.
The center, located in the Chafee Social Science Center, has been closed and undergoing extensive renovations since August 2018, and now students will have access to robotic cameras, an 11-foot-long news desk, a professional overhead lighting grid, an updated control room and mobile production units.
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The construction and equipment was funded by grants from the Champlin Foundation and the URI Provost’s Office. There were also private donations from Richard and Jean Harrington and Herman Rose, and members of the Harrington School Advisory Board.
The Broadcast Center officially reopened Friday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Christiane Amanpour, CNN chief international anchor and URI graduate.
On Thursday, Amanpour gave a sold-out lecture at URI on press freedom entitled “Truthful Not Neutral.”
“The URI Broadcast Center is the only academic facility of its kind and magnitude in the state,” Adam Roth, director of the Harrington School and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said in a news release before the ribbon-cutting. “Its cutting-edge technology will greatly enhance our curriculum and production capabilities, along with providing students the skills needed to succeed and become leaders in communication and media.”
URI said the new studio and control room will serve as a classroom for courses in topics such as sports media and TV production, and it will be made available for workshops for students and faculty.
The facility’s capabilities go far beyond those of the previous center. The new equipment provides students a hands-on experience in a number of areas, including the ability to produce content from the field and oversee event broadcasts from buildings around the Kingston campus, URI said.
“This Broadcast Center is primarily an educational tool, but this is a working, professional facility and there’s a capability here that URI has never had before,” Jeff Fountain, manager of the center and instructor in TV production, said in a statement. “It’s probably going to take a year for faculty and staff to fully understand the magnitude of capabilities the studio brings.”
