Channeling Research: Video Opportunities

Outreach. It's a line item on grant proposals; most agencies expect that a portion of the funds they give you will go into somehow informing the public about significant findings.

OSU now has a new way to help you to meet the outreach component, in living color.

On January 1, the University will become a member of ResearchChannel, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing a media presence for research activity. Broadcasting through satellite and cable television systems and on the web, ResearchChannel also works on the development of new technologies to create video resources to serve scientific communities.

Thanks to start-up funds from the the Research Office and the Provost Funds for Excellence , OSU joins a consortium whose membership includes National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins University, IBM Corporation, and Yale. Rich Holdren, Vice Provost for Research, credits the vision and persistence of Larry Pribyl, who is Co-director of OSU's Communication Media Center and also serves as Executive Producer for ResearchChannel.

"We see this as one cutting-edge way to fulfill our land-grant mission," says Holdren. "The channel will help us to display the process of our excellent scholarship and research. We can show anything we do- not only dramatic ocean voyages, but also, a musical performance, a student teacher's day in an elementary school . . . This will be an exciting way to communicate to any public - local, national, and international."

Any video produced for Research Channel will be available by the university and the researcher for use in other venues, from education to publicity to leverage for future funding.

Pribyl says that membership entitles OSU to 10 hours of airtime per year. "We'll probably create several half-hour segments, and also some longer features. Some can be about single investigations, some about an issue being worked on in several disciplines.

Pribyl will coordinate with media staff from around campus for everything from planning to storyboarding and scripting to shooting and editing. "The beginning stages of a research project can be wonderful material for this media, so it's important to include us early-on."

While Pribyl and other media staff have several pilot videos in mind, he invites all faculty to consider their own studies in light of this opportunity, and to contact him.

While funding from the Provost and Research Office are helping to start the project this year, it will become a self-sustaining effort funded by the research grants.

To view live programming and video-on-demand, and for more information, visit ResearchChannel, www.researchchannel.org

Faculty interested in learning more about the possibilities can contact Larry Pribyl at 737-3817, larry.pribyl@oregonstate.edu

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