Cal State L.A.’s TV, media program garners $50,000 HFPA grant
New Department of Television, Film and Media Studies coming this fall
Los Angeles, CA – The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has awarded California State University, Los Angeles a $50,000 gift for the University’s highly-regarded Television and Media Studies Program within the Department of Communication Studies.
The HFPA grant will support the recruitment and retention of CSULA students pursuing graduate degrees in the fields of television and media studies, with fellowships of $1,000-$5,000 to be designated for direct educational expenses.
“Cal State L.A. is honored to have the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognize the potential contributions to media studies of our new Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Television, Film and Theatre (TVFT); and the achievements of all our media studies students and faculty,” said Suzanne Regan, acting chair of the Communication Studies department at Cal State L.A.
Regan added, “We appreciate this generous support for media production projects, which will greatly enhance our undergraduate and graduate students’ educational goals.”
This fall, the Television and Media Studies Program at Cal State L.A.—building on its curricula strengths and faculty expertise—will be granted department status, in order to better prepare students for the contemporary creative realities of artistic production. To reside directly under the auspices of the University’s College of Arts and Letters, it will be officially named the Department of Television, Film and Media Studies.
The new Department will be home to the University’s MFA in TVFT program, which was launched fall 2008 with a cohort of 20 students. The degree program is the only one of its kind on a college campus in the United States that brings the four creative arms of the entertainment industry—producers, directors, writers and actors—together as cohorts.
In the center of the world’s largest concentration of the entertainment industry, Cal State L.A. has the feasibility of inviting a rotating roster of Hollywood’s top producers, directors, screenwriters and actors to campus as guest speakers and student mentors.
For details, go to www.calstatela.edu/academic/tvft or www.calstatela.edu/academic/tvf/graduate.php.
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Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 215,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six Colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu