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Longtime Director of K-State's Educational Communications Center, Mel Chastain, to Retire

December 1, 2006

Mel Chastain, director of the Kansas Regents Educational Communications Center at Kansas State University, will retire Jan. 3, 2007.

Chastain's tenure has been marked by numerous professional awards for the center, as well as technological advancements that helped to enhance educational access opportunities for people in Kansas and throughout the country.

Chastain joined K-State in 1988 as director of the newly established Educational Communications Center, a statewide effort of the Kansas Board of Regents to bring greater learning opportunities to Kansans through the use of communications technology. The center has been in Bob Dole Hall since 1991. The building includes two broadcast-quality television production studios, a technology-enhanced classroom, a videoconference room, two instructor-driven studios, a mobile production unit, a multimedia development laboratory, several non-linear editing suites, both fixed – or steerable – and transportable KU-Band uplink capabilities, a low-power television station, and Cable Channel 8, serving Manhattan and Junction City. The facility was named in honor of former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas.

“Dr. Chastain has done a simply outstanding job of visualizing a professional television, video production and media creation center to assist the university in teaching and learning and telling its story to the world,” said Elizabeth Unger, vice provost for academic services and technology and dean of continuing education at K-State.

“Under his leadership, the facility was created, thousands of high school students across the nation learned Spanish in schools that did not have a teacher of modern languages, and coverage of university and state events like the Landon Lecture Series and the governor's annual State of the State address were made available to the citizens of Kansas,” Unger said. “Mel will be sorely missed but he has left the Educational Communications Center in a position of stable prominence.”

The center supports the educational, informational and training needs of a wide variety of clients through conventional videotape or discs, multimedia or via the Internet.

Members of the center's staff assist university faculty members whose needs can range from videotaping lectures to the production of entire mediated courses. For nearly two decades, a nationally distributed Educational Communications Center program has enabled high school students to learn Spanish via satellite and interactive DVD. Kansas attorneys also regularly earn continuing legal education credits through center programming.

One of the most visible of the center's activities is providing video for the video boards at home K-State football and men's and women's basketball games. Among some of the more noted projects the center has been involved with included providing worldwide video feeds for the GlobalFlyer world record flight. In addition, as a Kansas Board of Regents facility, the center collaborates on educational programs and projects with all of the state's Regents institutions.

During Chastain's tenure, the Educational Communication Center's staff has won more than 50 state and national awards for its educational programming and advancements, including several University Continuing Education Association Distance Learning Community Program of Excellence Awards, multiple American Distance Education Consortium Excellence in Distance Education Awards and numerous Telly Awards.

“I am most proud of the staff we have here at the Educational Communications Center,” Chastain said. “We have a great building and the latest equipment, but to be successful, we must have people who are what I call good ‘translators.’”

“Our first task is to listen carefully to the faculty, staff or administrator and help them identify the public they're trying to reach, the message they need to communicate and the ‘change in behavior’ they wish to create as the result of that interactive experience. From that information, we work closely with each client to tell the story that achieves that objective. Each member of our staff is an excellent ‘storyteller,’” he said.

Chastain, who was born in Baldwin City, earned his bachelor's degree in radio-TV-film and his master's degree in communicative arts, both from the University of Denver, and his doctorate in educational administration from Texas A&M University. He began his career in educational television at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and the University of California at Berkeley. At Texas A&M, Chastain established a multiple-channel campus closed circuit TV system, a PBS television station, an NPR radio station and a contract productions unit. He taught journalism and mass communications at the undergraduate level, and curriculum design and learning theory at the graduate level while he was a member of the Texas A&M graduate faculty.