WINOOSKI, Vt., (Oct. 23, 2008) - Innovators throughout the business and education worlds are increasingly seeking ways to harness the untapped potential of electronic games and social media as powerful learning tools. The Emergent Media Center (EMC) at Champlain College has led the way in exploring this exciting new territory. Now that pioneering journey takes its next step as the EMC moves into new quarters at Winooski's historic Champlain Mill.

The official opening of the EMC on Oct. 21 provided the business community a chance to meet the students, faculty and staff of the new high-tech education center and see first-hand the ground-breaking projects Champlain College students are working on.

 Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, Secretary of the VT Agency of Commerce and Community Development Kevin Dorn, Champlain College President David F. Finney, and representatives from many top technology and software design companies around the U.S. and Canada attended the opening at the former woolen mill located on the banks of the Winooski River.

"I really see what we are celebrating today as the next industrial revolution," Gov. Douglas said.

Gov. Douglas sees the EMC's move into the Champlain Mill as a critical step in the state's creation of a thriving hub for innovative new media and technology businesses. The EMC is poised to become a vital link to a burgeoning creative community, one that will work with the Vermont Software Developers Alliance to grow this sector of the economy. The state currently has more than 250 software companies.

Gov. Douglas announced several new incentives to attract software development companies to locate in Vermont and presented nearly $200,000 in state funding to support the Vermont Software Developers Alliance and the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies. He called for giving priority to software companies under the state's Vermont Employment Growth Incentive program.

According to state officials, the EMC is a great example of showcasing the exciting careers young people can enjoy in Vermont. Located in a renovated woolen mill in Winooski, Champlain students are able to live across the street in a new student housing facility, and rub elbows with design and software engineering professionals who have already located to the Champlain Mill.

Champlain President David Finney explained, "The EMC is a key part of Champlain College's commitment to provide its students with revolutionary educational opportunities in today's rapidly evolving global fields, it is at the cutting edge of a technology-driven future." 

Since its launch in 2006, the EMC at Champlain College has blazed a trail to where emergent technologies and learning converge, according to Ann DeMarle, director of the EMC. The electronic game industry is a world-wide economic engine that generates over $32.6 billion in revenue annually. That figure is expected to double by the year 2011, she notes.

"Students at the EMC are not merely seizing new opportunities, they're creating them. Over the past year alone, EMC students have distinguished themselves at conferences in Orlando, Boston, Montreal and Houston. And their skills and professionalism have led to ground-breaking partnerships with a wide range of organizations," she said, adding "They are the next generation of thinkers and doers."

Among these many milestones is a project with the United Nations Population Fund. In partnership with the Population Media Center, the EMC is using new electronic media to positively impact women's public health and human rights issues.

Dan Bergeron, a Champlain senior, joined the UN project team and traveled to Cape Town, South Africa in late August with a team of students researching the project. "This opportunity allowed me to expand my knowledge above and beyond the classroom.  As a marketing student, I have grown to be more culturally inclusive through first-hand experience and primary research. The Emergent Media Center has given me given me to opportunity of a lifetime.  The average college senior is not able to say that they have been to Africa and worked on a project funded by the United Nations."

Other current EMC partners include IBM, America's Army, CIMIT at Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Vermont and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Games for Health, Information Literacy, Google Earth, and the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain.

"We are truly entering a Renaissance world - one of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary possibilities - where technology, art and communications work together towards a common goal, and where the point of reference changes constantly at the speed of innovation," DeMarle noted. "The Emergent Media Center at Champlain College is intent on pushing creative technologies beyond what we know by integrating advanced technological tools with cultural awareness, creativity, communication and a sense of history and place. These combined skills are paramount to success in today's global economy and in every professional field."

Lauren Nishikawa, a Champlain College student who has worked at the EMC for more than a year, explained that for her, "Every hour spent working at the EMC is an hour spent putting meaning into the theory I've learned in the classroom. Every student that works here has taken this opportunity and run with it."

"Vermont is uniquely positioned to benefit from this growth due to its central location between Boston and Montreal, two important regions in the e-game world. Montreal supports over 50 game-related companies and development studios, including Ubisoft, Eidos, A2M and mega-producer, Electronic Arts. Boston is also home to many small and mid-sized companies who are profiting significantly from the industry's growth." DeMarle said.

Vermont has one of the highest concentrations of high-tech exports in the nation. In fact, three-quarters of all exports from Vermont are high-tech goods, heading for places like Canada, Hong Kong and South Korea, according to a recent study by AeA, the nation's largest technology trade association representing all segments of the high-tech industry. The report, Trade in the Cyberstates 2008: A State-by-State Overview of High-Tech International Trade, covers all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Burlington itself is seeing a development in business clusters that support the electronic media industry - Ascension Technology, JDK Design, Polhemus, JNJMobile, BullDog Entertainment, Tertl Studos, EpikOne, Resolution Inc. and Vermont Film Commission - all of which provide a valuable resource for the Center and the community.

DeMarle noted that Vermont is a great place for companies in the emerging media sphere to locate, since it is located between Boston and Montreal and near New York City. "Vermont is at the crossroads of divergent thinking and disruptive technologies upon which innovation is born. We are at that crossroads - bringing new ways of thinking, of inventing, of building, born by linking distinctive global regions. That's why we are succeeding here," she said.

 Through its Game Design and Game Programming majors, Champlain College prepares its graduates with the skills they will need for successful careers in emergent media fields.  To learn more, www.go.champlain.edu/emc

Champlain College was founded in 1878 and currently has nearly 2,000 undergraduate students. To learn more about Champlain College, visit www.champlain.edu

The Emergent Media Center at Champlain College has these objectives:

• Provide structure, space and support for student learning through innovative partnerships and emergent media projects, interdisciplinary and team-based educational models, internships, competitions and exhibitions, assistantships and external opportunities and outreach;

• Define future use of game technologies and content creation through student and faculty-inspired projects, faculty and professional sabbatical exchanges, exploration, creation and assessment of educational models employing game development and certificate and degree program development;

• Creat opportunities for industry exchanges by sponsoring conferences and speaker series, managing serious game partnerships and projects, hosting industry-driven collaboratives, promoting linkages between local and global industries and providing incubator support for student endeavors.