Africa

A priority focus of ITS research, training, consultation and multimedia production for 2004-2005 will center on Africa. This exact nature of this initiative is still being defined pending a survey of Ohio University faculty interests, experience and skill sets, re African development.

The Institute for Telecommunications Studies has only modest background in Africa but foresees a great need for intervention in the areas of education and health. With the appointment of African Studies director Steve Howard to the College of Communication, along with his highly visible Center for the African Child, the opportunity arises to look for ways to apply media and telecommunication components to the challenges of African development.

Prior work includes:

• Several training and curriculum development projects carried out on behalf of African educational and media institutions during the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of the first of these was a faculty assignment to Swaziland as distance teaching consultant to the Swazi Ministry of Education. Don Flournoy worked with Swazi radio and television personnel and with university and teacher training college staff March–June 1988 under sponsorship of the USAID-Ohio University Teacher Education Project for Southern Africa.
• ITS director Don Flournoy was project manager of a USIA sponsored program for middle-management radio, television and public information producers representing 15 African countries. The May 1991 training workshop was held on the Ohio University campus in Athens.
• From June-September 1994, Don Flournoy was U.S. program manager for radio training and internships for Malagasy broadcasters. This was an ITS coordinated contract managed from Athens on behalf of the Voice of America.
• During 1994-1995, Vibert Cambridge and Don Flournoy served as coordinators and consultants for needs assessment projects among selected African states in a joint program involving Ohio University and Howard University funded by the USIA.
• In February 1994, ITS director Don Flournoy was contracted by the USIA to serve as a trainer of radio, television, press and news agency personnel in Angola. Television interviews with US aid officials, the new US Ambassador and Angolan Foreign Minister were videotaped by TPA-Angola and aired on CNN-International. In 1995, the ITS hosted the Angolan Minister of Information Hon. Henrik val Neto at Ohio University. The Minister spoke to classes and made a presentation to Alden Library of 200 rare books from the Angolan Writers Union, an arrangement involving Ohio University Dean of Libraries Hwa Wei Lee.
• In 1999, Don Flournoy interviewed SABC News Editor Allistair Sparks and reporters in SABC studios, Johannesburg, South Africa and observed newsroom procedures for an ITS news flow research project.
• In July 2004, ITS director Don Flournoy was invited to represent the satellite industry at an ICT Stakeholders conference in Mauritius sponsored by the International Telecommunications Union, the Commonwealth Business Council and the Global VSAT Forum. The discussion centered on the “wiring up” of Africa using fiber optic, copper, wireless and satellite platforms to promote economic and social development. The communication ministers of 28 African countries, several major funding organizations and telecommunication providers were there to interact with members of the new eAfrica Commission.

Eurasia

The republics of the former Soviet Union and nearby states have held the attention of the Institute for Telecommunications Studies since the end of the Cold War.

Beginning in 1991, Ohio University was a university partner of the Voice of America bringing journalists and media professionals from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the United States for short-term training and masters degree programs. The ITS is now managing its fifth major development project designed to strengthen independent media in the region.

The latest of these projects is with the National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy (KMA), one of the oldest and most progressive universities in Ukraine. With $304,000 of Ohio University contributed effort and a $247,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State, the current project (2004-2007) focuses on training of Journalists in documentary and multimedia production.

Faculty are being exchanged, curriculum is being developed and workshops will be held involving Ukrainian faculty and students and working media professional in Kiev. Faculty members from the KMA Journalism Masters program Olexiy Mikhayuk and Ruslan Petrychka are in Athens in Fall 2004 and TCOM faculty members Joe Richie and Roger Good will be in Kiev in Winter and Spring 2005.

The first two of the earlier media development projects brought mid-career radio and television broadcasters from the Baltic states for orientation and internships within US media outlets. Media workshops and programs of training were also organized in each of the three countries led by American broadcasters, cable operators and newspaper industry professionals.

Under sponsorship of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation), International Media Fund, U.S. Department of State, USIA, VOA, and the U.S./Baltic Foundation, OU’s Institute for Telecommunications Studies took the lead in installing media production centers in the Baltic national universities and carrying out training workshops aimed at journalists, media officials, media associations, university instructors and students. The focus of each of these initiatives was to foster a professional, diverse and politically independent media industry.

The third of these projects, with $252,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of State (Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs), put into place audio and video training facilities (production studios, editing equipment and the like) at Tartu University, University of Latvia and Vilnius University and trained academic staff.

The fourth project, in the form of a $105,000 contract funded by the USIA and the U.S. Baltic Foundation, was aimed at strengthening the Baltic media associations. Managers of Baltic broadcast, cable and print professional associations were partnered with the comparable US associations by way of briefings, workshops, internships and professional/technological (Internet) linkages.

The ITS hosted in Athens in October 1998 a three-day “Workshop on Public Responsibilities of the Media.” In attendance were the 50 FSA/ Muskie Fellows from Central and Eastern Europe attending U.S. universities during 1998-2000 and Ohio University faculty and students. Eileen O’Connor, White House Correspondent for CNN, Frank Deaner, Ohio Newspaper Association, Lillian Fernandez, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Kay Jackson, Cable Television Association, were visiting professionals at this workshop. The $25,000 project was funded by the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) of New York.

All of these projects grew out of ITS initiatives to interest the U.S. government and several international foundations in providing education and training opportunities for media professionals in the CIS following the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Indonesia

The fact that the Institute for Telecommunications Studies is focusing a special issue of the Online Journal of Space Communication in 2004 on “The Role Satellites Have Played in Indonesian National Development” is not a random coincidence.

ITS director Don Flournoy was a Senior Fulbright Scholar to Indonesia in 1977-78 assigned to the Ministry of Education and Culture. He advised a National Committee whose goal was to convert 650 Indonesian colleges and universities to an American system of higher education management (from the Dutch). The Committee’s report, entitled “Efficiency-Productivity-Relevance-Diversity-Quality: Recommendations for Improvement of Indonesian Higher Education,” led to the national adoption of the semester (rather than year-long) calendar and implementation of “Sistim Kredit,” the academic (weighted student) credit hour system favored by American universities.

To improve his proficiency in the Indonesian language and to better understand the culture, Don Flournoy (and wife Mary Anne) attended two SE Asian Intensive Summer Institutes (in 1978 and in 1983) and took academic year instruction from OU’s Department of Linguistics. He has traveled to SE Asia six times working on various development projects. In Indonesia he has been under contract to the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Research and Technology, the Department of Transmigration and the Ford Foundation.

In 1989, Don Flournoy was engaged by the Texas International Education Consortium (TIEC), Austin, to provide background data and advice on a $200 million bid on a higher education development project for the outer islands of Indonesia.
In 1992, Don Flournoy served as consultant to a new Indonesian media company Atlantis Total Communications on several TV privatization projects. He gave a presentation on "Television Training: Vocational and Academic Models" to the Seminar on the Future of Indonesian Television sponsored by STT-Telkom and ATC Communications, World Trade Centre, Jakarta. He served as curriculum consultant to STT-Telkom (the Indonesian state telecommunications authority) in developing TV production and management tracks for its new training facility in Bandung.

In 1997, Don Flournoy was consultant to the Jakarta-based Universitas Pembangunan Nasional in development of a new communications curriculum within the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences.

Don Flournoy served as technical editor in the Indonesian-to-
English translation of Makmur Makka’s B.J. HABIBIE: HIS LIFE
AND CAREER (former Minister of Research and Technology,
Vice President and later President of Indonesia) authored by A. Makmur Makka, published in 1999, acknowledged in the Preface.
With his wife Mary Anne, Don Flournoy served as Faculty Advisor to the Indonesian Students Association (PERMIAS) at Ohio University1979-present. The numbers have fluctuated but there have been times when as many as 200 Indonesians were in Athens, largely as a result of the couple’s work with Indonesian governmental institutions, public and private universities and with alumni.

Taiwan

In 1994, ITS Director Don Flournoy delivered the keynote address at an international Symposium on Film, Television and Video in Taiwan on the topic “Universal Service: The Uncertain Future of the Global Information Highways.” He also gave university lectures in Taipei and Tai Chung on new technologies of telecommunication and consulted with government officials on DBS and cable issues. While there, he met with AT&T-Taiwan officials about the implementation of a broadband multimedia test between Ohio and Taiwan using the AT&T (TAT-8) fiber line that connects Athens County to Europe on the East and Asia on the West.

Turkey

In August 1998, ITS director Don Flournoy was a guest of the Turkish National Association of Business and Industry (SASIAD) consulting on the Internet and lecturing on “Electronic Commerce.” He also gave lectures at Sakarya University in Adapazari on “Internet and Education.” He was twice interviewed on National Television Channel 7 from Istanbul with CNN as the topic for one show and Indonesian national development for the other.