It takes a patient gardener to reap a rich harvest. The same goes for professors and university department heads getting the most out of their talented students.
Amy Lanasa is not only patient, but also a persistent gardener.
Lanasa, professor and department head in New Mexico State University’s Creative Media Institute, has spent the last eight and a half years seeding her department with top-notch faculty and cultivating their work. She’s recently added Journalism and Media Studies as well as the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing to her responsibilities.
Lanasa started teaching at NMSU nearly 20 years ago. Today, she and her colleagues are raising CMI’s impact on students to the next level to make them more marketable when they graduate.
“We're creating a school of creative media and aligning with the journalism department and as part of that, faculty have started collaborating across the arts and social sciences,” said Lanasa. “Faculty in our Creative Writing program include two Guggenheim winners and National Book Award winners. They are incredible scholars and writers.”
During Lanasa’s tenure, the Creative Media Institute has demonstrated a track record for success.
NMSU’s animation program continues to be ranked among the top programs in the country for the 12th year in a row. Earlier this year, Animation Career Review evaluated nearly 200 programs across the United States. In the 2023 rankings list, NMSU’s animation program rose from 22nd to 19th nationally. The program remains ranked seventh regionally and first in New Mexico.
In a survey CMI conducted before the pandemic, the department received responses from 170 film and animation students. At that time, 51% of CMI alums said their first job after graduation was in or using what they learned in CMI, and they obtained that job within two months of graduating. The survey also showed 96% of alumni’s current work was in or using creative media, with 65% reporting full-time work and 31% reporting part-time work. Approximately 80% of the alumni surveyed stayed in New Mexico and the border region for work.
While the pandemic did negatively impact the industry, the need for workers with CMI skills is rising steadily. Lanasa explained the demand for their program is so high they are forced to turn away about 50% of the applicants because they don’t have the faculty or facilities to accommodate all the students.
“Currently our labs are all capped at 17 students,” Lanasa said. “This academic year we will have 191 freshmen and transfer students apply to CMI alone, and I've got room for 96 of them.”
Despite the challenges, Lanasa and her colleagues are pushing the envelope giving students a leg up in the job market. In fall 2023, CMI Professor Ross Marks and his students shot a full-length feature film, “The Santa Assist,” starring Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated actor Eric Roberts. The film also stars Eliza Roberts, Johnathan Stoddard and Alexandra Harris. Directed by Marks, the film employed more than two dozen students and a handful of CMI alumni, shooting the film in and around Las Cruces in October and November.
“I am excited to bring another film to my hometown and state,” Marks said. “More than 20 NMSU students will gain real world experience and on-the-job training making this film. That makes the film a huge success even before it is released.”
Lanasa explained that Marks is also the liaison with the Southern Media Collective, working to create a “career ladder so CMI can line up independent films produced in this area as students are graduating so they can get paid $15, $20 an hour to work alongside union reps in key positions so recent grads can the union hours they need. The feature film class in the fall is our response to needing that career ladder. The industry won’t hire graduates whose only experience is making short films.”
“You can't get a job working on a feature film until you've worked on a feature,” Lanasa explained. “Our answer to that is, ‘okay then we're going to create the opportunity for our students to do it while they're our students.’ And it’s evolved over the years, we’ve figured out how to build a whole semester around making a feature film and alongside industry partners.”
Experience-based learning is also the force behind a new course created by CMI Professor Sherwin Lau called “Client-based Storytelling.” Fifteen students in Lau’s class worked together with public relations students in Journalism and Media Studies in the fall semester to come up with marketing videos to respond to the needs of clients, in a similar way to ad agencies, which provide services to companies.
“Sherwin’s students worked directly with eight clients in the fall semester to create short marketing videos for entities like the Sunspot Solar Observatory and Aggie Jumpstart.”
“We set the bar high for these students,” Lau said. “This first-time Client-based Storytelling Class was a good learning experience for both the students and me. We completed four videos for CMI and worked with four different organizations/departments on campus – College of Engineering, College of Business, Aggie Jumpstart program and the Dunn Solar Telescope/Sunspot Solar Observatory.”
Lanasa envisions the future of education centering around learning-by-doing.
“Generation Alpha is not going to want to sit around in classrooms or even sit in front of screens because they already spend their free time on phones and tablets,” Lanasa said. “To get them to go to college we will have to offer them something different. We offer students a place where they can learn how to make films, how to develop their own voices and get professional experience while they are students. That helps them immediately go into the real world and get industry jobs when they graduate.”
Lanasa was 26 years old when she started teaching at NMSU. She and her colleagues are like family.
“We all grew up together and alongside generation after generation of these students,” Lanasa said. “We see the growing, incredible mark that the film industry is making on our state. We’ve seen it change young people’s lives and have a positive economic impact on our region. So many of our students are the first generation to go to college. We know when those young people succeed, so do their siblings and their parents, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles. That’s the real privilege, to be part of their stories.
“I think what’s great about CMI and why it’s working for us all to come together with journalism and the MFA is because the faculty and staff share the same ‘why.’ We want these kids to be successful. We want them to be employable. We want to give them skills that are going to help them get jobs. And we want those jobs to be here because that makes our home a better place. No matter what you teach, when your ‘why’ is the same, that gives you a very fertile ground to grow.”
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CUTLINE: Cast and crew on the set of "The Santa Assist," a film by Creative Media Institute professor Ross Marks. (Courtesy photo)