By Paul Brunskole

Buffalo State College may be seeing a new major as early as the fall semester of 2006. A letter of intent has been sent to the State University of New York offices in Albany about the proposed television arts major.

The major, which would be added to give another option not only for students currently in the communication department, but also incoming and students looking to switch majors to get into television sitcom acting and storytelling, is in the process of becoming an official major. Students will learn the history of storytelling and develop their own personal voice and style of storytelling.

“The major would be an organic English theater of storytelling,” says BSC professor Drew Kahn. Kahn, who has given his total backing of the program, feels that this would be a great addition to the theatre program at BSC.

Students in the new major will be given the latest technology to work with as well as successful, professional alumni such as Tom Fontana, Diane English and Deborah Oppenheimer.

“The question is can we crank out storytellers? Are there storytellers or sitcom actors out there who are being missed?” said Kahn.

The focus would be taking what is learned in acting, and adding onto that with learning about what is different from theatre acting and television acting.

Dean Mel Netzhammerof the School of Arts and Humanities has been overseeing the process of getting the major approved.

The program announcement is now in a 60-day “comment” phase along with a new writing major. The comment phase allows time for other SUNY schools to give their input on the proposed major with concerns or questions.

“Once the comments are received, SUNY will give us approval to move forward,” Netzhammer said. “Our goal is offer the major beginning in fall 2006, but it’s more likely that we’ll actually formally start offering the major in fall 2007.”

Contact Paul Brunskole at BrunPJ08@mail.buffalostate.edu