McRobbie: IU’s Renowned Creative Arts Culture to be Enhanced by University Cinema

Indiana University President Michael McRobbie tells us what’s unique about IU. (Thanks to all the presidents who participated this week — and a special thanks to our readers.)

  • Tell us something that not enough people know about your college or university that makes it such a special place.

IU has a magnificent tradition in the creative arts and the humanities that sometimes can go overlooked but has a major impact on our quality of life as Hoosiers. We have a myriad of areas—from language and literature to fine and performing arts—where IU programs are among the finest in the world, and our superb arts facilities across all of our campuses attract hundreds of thousands of people to art exhibits, ballets, concerts, lectures, plays, operas, and other events that typically are only offered in the nation’s major metropolitan areas. Our Bloomington campus alone hosts thousands of these types of events each year, many of which take place at the world-renowned Jacobs School of Music.

There is one area, though, where IU has had a superb scholarly reputation but has had no facilities, and this is film. We have remarkable cinematic collections, including our Black Film Center Archive, the David Bradley Film Collection, and our general library collection, which together contain tens of thousands of items. Last fall, we broke ground on a new University Cinema, which will feature a combination of digital cinema and traditional projection capabilities that will place it among the top tier of similar facilities around the world. It will show film classics, as well as the latest digital experimental, international, and scientific cinematic creations. We are extremely excited to unveil this state-of-the-art facility, which will serve scholars, students, and the broader community and showcase the masterpieces of cinema as they were meant to be seen.

McRobbie: Moving Forward Requires Asking Tough Questions

We end higher education week today with posts from Indiana University President Michael McRobbie.

  • What is the No. 1 change you would like to see in Indiana’s higher education system that would help serve students better?

I believe that strengthening the academic core of our universities should be our highest priority, particularly in these challenging economic times. This means we must begin asking ourselves difficult questions. Are we teaching in ways that are meaningful for today’s students, using technologies to educate students more effectively, assuring that important learning goals and outcomes are met, and identifying knowledge and skills that students will need to make valuable contributions in their communities? Asking these kinds of questions is critical in an economy where knowledge is expanding at an exponential rate, where people are changing jobs many times in their lives, and many of the most important jobs and careers are new ones.

We cannot wait for others to ask and answer these questions. Indeed, we must accept this challenge ourselves, and as a matter of urgency. That is why at IU we are establishing a New Academic Directions Committee that will examine the overall structure of our academic units and, hence, ensure that we are offering the best kinds of educational opportunities for students and responding quickly to major educational trends happening around the globe. In addition, each of our campuses will establish a New Directions in Learning Committee, including top administrators, faculty members, and outstanding students, to help us renew our commitment to the quality—and currency—of the education we provide.