The first seniors graduating with St. Lawrence University’s new Digital Media and Film major are wrapping up their Capstone Senior Year Experience class, where they have collaborated on a video podcast detailing their experiences with the major. The Capstone course is unique to DMF, and the students and faculty of the department hope it will serve as a representation of the versatility and interdisciplinary nature of the program.     

The seniors in the DMF Capstone course have been working together on the podcast for the whole semester leading up to finals week. Because so many students in the class have different skills and interests, everyone was able to contribute to the podcast in their own distinct way. “Taking the Capstone course, and being a DMF major in general, has given me the chance to learn more about everything I was already interested in within the realm of media production,” says Adri Nothnagle ’24. “And I also learned more about stuff I hadn’t had experience with before, like sound recording and audio editing.”    

The collaborative project aspect of the Capstone class is an opportunity for DMF students to get hands-on experience in a production setting. “Collaborating and working with a team is the next step after learning technical and digital production skills,” says Nicole Roche, the professor of the Capstone class. “You can learn a lot on your own from YouTube, but it is hard to replace the expertise of trained instructors and working with a team in general.” 

Additionally, students taking the Capstone course have the chance to develop soft skills alongside their technical abilities. “While collaborating on any project, you are going to encounter some real-world problems,” says Roche. “You are going to have to negotiate and communicate with other people to solve those problems.”    

Roche acknowledges that a collaborative project sponsored by the department is an effective way of fostering the vastly different research and production interests of all the seniors in a given class. “Everyone brings their own talents and skills and is an important part of the process,” mentions Roche. “And the final product is something that all of the students had a central role in making — something they can be proud to share.”    

The Capstone course reflects the flexible nature of the DMF major. According to Sarah Knobel, one of two co-chairs of the DMF department, the major itself is very transdisciplinary compared to other major programs at SLU. “It really is up to the student, and if they have specific interests, they can hone that in with the classes they are taking,” says Knobel. “If you look at the curriculum, you will see that there are multiple options for foundation courses, so there are lots of directions a student can take — and a lot of other majors do not really offer that.”    

The Capstone class and other courses available for DMF may change depending on how media evolves in the future. Brook Henkel, who works with Knobel as co-chair of the DMF department, says that they plan to adapt the course and the nature of the collaborative project to the different needs, interests and skills of each individual cohort of DMF students, year to year.   

“Ideally, as we move forward with this Capstone seminar, we would probably have a chance to coordinate with the students ahead of the semester and see what they are most interested in,” says Henkel. “Then we allow them to either bring to the seminar their own ideas or their own independent project that they want to realize over the course of the semester outside of the collaborative work.”   

The students in the Capstone class are planning to post the video portion of the podcast to YouTube and the full audio tracks to Spotify or Apple for Podcasters. They are hopeful that the university communications team will use their podcast to promote the DMF major for both current undeclared and incoming students. “Lots of people, both professors and students, have worked very hard to get the DMF major off the ground,” says Emily Boswell ’24. “This podcast is our chance to highlight all of the cool things about DMF, the things that set it apart from other major programs at SLU.”