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Details

Rita Chang

"Classroom Encounters with Global Change Scientists" is the brainchild of the series' producer and co-director, Rita Chang. Before becoming an earth science teacher at Wellesley High School, Ms. Chang spent twenty years as an executive and entrepreneur-for-social
benefit in the health care delivery field, including starting up two
non-profit medical service organizations that brought physician services to
underserved populations, and serving as their chief executive officer. In her last position, Ms. Chang was Executive Director for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School where she met and worked with world renowned scientists in the global change field. To promote better scientific understanding, Ms. Chang organized educational forums -- congressional briefings, media breakfasts, a New England Town Meeting on Climate Change, a two-day Intensive course for congressional aides -- that brought eminent scientists to the "big-wig" politicians and policy makers as well as the public. Ms. Chang has now brought the same caliber scientists -- with their big picture view of what is happening to our planet -- to the most important audience of all: young people. Working closely with Alan Fine during the editing process, Ms. Chang oversaw the scientific and educational content of the films, including choice of images, photos and illustrations (including some of her own) and the use of chapter stops and video clips to help teachers use the material as they see fit. Ms. Chang is a graduate of Hastings High School, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, Johns Hopkins University and holds a Masters degree from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.

 

Alan Fine

The "look" and "feel" of the film series, DVDs and website for "Classroom Encounters with Global Change Scientists" belongs to independent filmmaker, Alan Fine. Not only did he co-produce/direct and edit the shoots, bringing a film makers’ professionalism to the series from the get-go, he also authored the DVDs' interactivity, so all Classroom Encounters ® DVDs have a chapter stop for each topic, question and answer for easy teacher/student/viewer access. To see screen menus, click here.)

Mr. Fine brings a varied background to this endeavor. He currently consults for Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures and DreamWorks Animation, and has been a standup comedian who was a winning contestant on "The Dating Game," appeared as an actor on "Cheers" and other shows, and has sold five screen and teleplays to Hollywood.

Mr. Fine learned film and television production, filmmaking, and directing while assisting executive producers and directors at Universal and Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles. He became a Development Executive for Mercedes Entertainment and Carmen Culver Films, and directed infomercials for Roth Advertising.

He has directed several on-its-feet readings of his original play in Manhattan, is a member of the Neighborhood Playhouse Workshop there, and is currently the director, editor and DVD interactivity designer of the Classroom Encounters series.

Mr. Fine is a graduate of Hastings High School, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY and Tufts University, Medford, MA.

(Click here for more on Mr. Fine)

The Films

Ms. Chang’s 9th grade earth science classroom at Wellesley High School doubled for a set in three shoots.

The fourth was filmed in the Little Theater at Wellesley High to accommodate more students.

Dr. Kerry Emanuel of MIT, one of the world's leading experts on hurricanes, came to to Wellesley High School for the fifth shoot in February, 2006. You may have heard him on the radio or seen him on TV during the record breaking Atlantic hurricane season last Fall, 2005. He is the author of the newly released book, Divine Wind, The History and Science of Hurricanes, by Oxford University Press and was recently interviewed by the The New York Times (January 10, 2006).

Dr. Robert Watson, one of the foremost scientists in the world on climate change has agreed to be featured in a future episode. Dr. Watson is a "Rock Star" of climate change. He's the former Chair of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative body on climate change that has brought together thousands of climate scientists from around the world to monitor planetary change on an ongoing basis. He is currently the Chief Scientist and Director of the World Bank's Sustainable Development Network. As Chair of the Millennium Assessment, he oversaw the work of fourteen hundred scientists from ninety-five countries investigating the health of the earth's ecosystems. Four years in the making, the The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment's goal was to conduct a global inventory of the state of our ecosystems, quantify the effect that human activities have on them and make suggestions for the future.

Whenever possible and with permission, Ms. Chang and Mr. Fine use original student art and music in the finished products. Cick here for the Student Gallery.

A graduate of Wellesley High School, David Thonis, now at the Rhode Island School of Design, created the "floating earth" logo for Classroom Encounters, which is also used as the
cover art for its DVDs.

Students operate additional cameras to round out the professional film and audio crew. To ensure the entire team acts as a single unit, Mr. Fine prepares story boards accessible via a password protected site on the Internet, and spends time before each shoot debriefing the crew. He works closely with students especially, demonstrating how to capture the professional shots required, and during the shoot, he "calls the shots" over wireless headsets worn by each crew member.

Below are samples of storyboards used to convey the needs of the project to the crew members. To see some of the student storyboards, click here.