JANE LEE
News Editor
As part of an effort to merge the Pepperdine community with Hollywood, Seaver College will welcome its first class of students into the newly created two-year master’s of film and arts (MFA) program in fall 2008.
The program, concentrated in screen and television writing, will be at the graduate level within the Humanities and Teacher Education Division.
The creation of the program began more than two years ago when Pepperdine professors Todd Bouldin and Nancy Dodd reviewed curriculums of other local universities.
“We were looking at the one thing Pepperdine could do that other schools already had, and we came up with this,” Bouldin said. “There was always a missing link in our programs, and we kept hearing these voices over and over that got us to a point in saying, ‘Yes, we need to do this.’”
According to Bouldin, the focus of the MFA program is to train students for a vocation as screen and television writers and develop storytellers as cultural leaders — a goal not addressed by similar graduate writing programs.
“We’ve partnered with a Christian screenwriting group that has students involved who usually have a choice of either USC or UCLA, so we feel like our program here will fill a real niche for those students,” Bouldin said. “The Pepperdine uniqueness is that we can talk about issues of faith and storytelling that draw from deeper wells than other programs can.”
Between 15 and 20 students will be added each fall, an effort being pushed by interim program director Leslie Kreiner.
“We would not discount students from Pepperdine who wish to apply to the program,” said Maire Mullins, Division Chair of Humanities and Teacher Education. “But at the same time, Leslie’s been going to film festivals and other schools across the country to do some recruiting.”
According to the program’s proposal, the courses in the program, which will mostly be taught by professional screenwriters, focus on the storyteller in conversation with contemporary culture through the lens of ethics, philosophy, film studies and religion.
“(Provost) Darryl Tippens deserves much credit for this vision,” Bouldin said. “He’s always been supportive of being more involved in Hollywood and the entertainment business.”
Mullins and Bouldin both said it’s important to note the program’s reflection and support of Pepperdine’s mission.
“We’re in the perfect location of Malibu,” Mullins said. “Combine that with the inclusion of our mission into the program, and we have something which no other program can virtually offer.”
Senior Tyler Burns, a business administration major who enjoys screenwriting, said the MFA program will help put Pepperdine on the map.
“It will help draw a larger assemblage of prospective film students to Pepperdine,” he said.
Although no classes have been held, the MFA program is already extending outside of Malibu. Act One, a large faith-based organization in Hollywood, has teamed up with Pepperdine to begin hosting screenwriting seminars at leading churches.
“We don’t want to put out mindless trash,” Bouldin said. “There’s an ethical component in having the screenwriter realize they are shaping people’s moral and culture.”
Mullins said that by looking at Pepperdine’s competitor schools, “we want to match or exceed those programs.”
“I just think the sky’s the limit with this,” she said. “We’re looking at something tremendous for Pepperdine.”
09-20-2007