Melissa Meek, Spring 2009 Features Editor
Diane Levine, professor of anthropology, won an Emmy Award in the category of Best Instructional Programming for her work as a content advisor on the instructional video series, “Physical Anthropology: The Evolving Human.”
“I had no idea (the series) was winning an Emmy,” said Levine, who was notified of her award by e-mail in September. “I was surprised.”
Bruce Rowe, professor of anthropology who has worked with Levine on writing two editions of a textbook, was also surprised.
“I’m very proud and happy for her. She’s an excellent researcher,” he said.
The series began production three years ago when Coastline Community College, one of the leading producers of distance-learning educational-film series, sent out an e-mail to many anthropology faculty members of various colleges. They were looking for anyone interested in working as an adviser for the series.
“What really impresses me is some of these people are from Harvard and University of New Orleans. It was exciting to meet all of these different people,” Levine said.
Levine chose to be a national adviser, which required heading to Orange County once to help out and then communicating by e-mail.
The advisers were hosted there for three days and broke up into groups to discuss their fields of expertise in anthropology.
“We gave them ideas about films we knew about and experts we knew about and what kinds of things we like to talk about in class,” Levine said.
Letters were sent out assigning parts to the advisers, which included lesson breakdowns. Levine ended up working on the section of religion and language.
“If you take a course through ITV (Instructional Television), you’re probably going to use a Coastline College film series and the book that was intended to go along with it,” Levine said.
The series is not currently in use at Pierce College. According to Levine, ITV did not offer anthropology during the current fall semester.
“Sometimes anthropology is really confusing with a lot of new terms to know. The series would help in the class,” said anthropology student Alejandra Cruz.
The series accompanies a textbook produced by one of the publishers who is sponsoring the videos.
“I remember them talking about six months ago that since they only did six series, they didn’t want to be competing against themselves, so they only submitted one of the series to the Emmys,” Levine said. “So maybe next year I’ll win another one when they submit again.”
Diane Levine, professor of anthropology, displays a candy dispencer made from a real monkey head in the anthropology storage room, Oct. 28. This year Levine won an Emmy for the series “Physical Anthropology (Francisco Munoz)