Beyond the tools: teaching management, leaderships skills at the Centre for Digital Media.(Knowledge & Career)(Great Northern Way Campus )

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The Centre for Digital Media at the Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC) in Vancouver opened last fall and is currently instructing its inaugural class through its Masters of Digital Media Program. Sounds typical, right? For the most part, yes; but in some aspects, it is anything but.

The GNWC is a collaborative university campus environment that draws on resources from the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Cart Institute of Art+Design, and British Columbia Institute of Technology. As such, those who complete the 20-month Masters of Digital Media Program receive a graduate degree that bears the seals of not just one, but all four academic partners.

Moreover, the government-funded facility grew out of lobbying efforts by local digital media successes--such as Rainmaker and Electronic Arts--looking to attract top-quality talent to the region, which claims to have more game developers per capita than anywhere else.

Two years ago, the government awarded the school a one-time economic development investment of $40.5 million dollars to get started. But unlike other schools where tools are the focus, the Centre's purpose is to develop talent that can eventually step into leadership and management roles in an industry that is changing dramatically as a result of the Internet, the convergence of mobile, user-generated content, and everything going digital.

"We assume that our students are already experts in their chosen field or core discipline," says Gerri Sinclair, executive director. "We do not see ourselves as technology trainers in that sense. We provide a technology infrastructure. We have an amazing rendering farm and a high-speed network, and students are given a state-of-the-art laptop. We have HD cameras and surround-sound capabilities. Our whole facility is built in a multimodal jack in/jack out capability where AV, the network, and projection is pervasive."

The inaugural class is home to 21 students, some from as far away as India and China. That number, says Sinclair, will grow to 35 with the next class, which begins session in December.