July 27, 2000 - Expression College for Digital Arts Receives Guidance from Entrepreneurs, Visionaries and Stars

EMERYVILLE, CA - Expression College for Digital Arts, an exciting new school approaching its first anniversary next January, will benefit in its future growth and development from the advice of a multi-level group of advisors, directors, managers and provocateurs. The talented and visionary individuals who have agreed to serve on Expression’s combined boards met together for the first time in November to review the school’s early progress and to begin to challenge it’s course into the future. A subsequent Board Meeting was held in April, with another scheduled for September.

Nuts-and-bolts questions occupied a portion of the first meeting, like how many students were then enrolled (162… there are now 205) and how many companies had said they would hire from among the first graduating class. To date, all of the graduates from the first two graduating classes have been either placed in internships or are successfully employed. Such businesslike inquiries were mixed liberally with more provocative and wide-ranging discussions, like how to ensure that Expression graduates will be adept at using programs and tools that haven’t even been invented yet, and whether students should be encouraged to become experts at using those futuristic tools or at inventing them.

Members of the boards are divided into three groups. A supervisory group of five members is chaired by founder and principal investor Eckart Wintzen, owner of the Ex’tent group of companies headquartered in the Netherlands. This supervisory board will be joined by two executive members, Expression founder and President Gary Platt and CEO Peter Laanen, four times a year to review and plan the school’s business operations. They are also guided by corporate counsel, Bram Zwagemaker, of the Netherlands, as an ex-officio member of the board. Other supervisory members of the board include:
Joichi Ito, president and founder of Digital Garage, an Internet business incubator in Japan; founder of Eccosys, Ltd. of Japan; and founder and chairman of Infoseek, Japan.

Jane Metcalfe, the former president and co-founder of Wired Ventures, Inc., a media company whose businesses include the award-winning Wired Magazine, Wired Digital, Inc., HotBot, and Wired TV.
Hope Spadora, vice president for worldwide corporate real estate and facilities at Sybase, Inc., in Emeryville, Calif. (Expression’s campus is in a building that was formerly part of the Sybase complex.) One of the tasks left to the full group after the first meeting was to help find the right person to fill a vacant fifth seat on the supervisory board. At least twice a year, this supervisory board will be joined by an additional board of advisors. Together, members of this larger group will look at the more wide-ranging questions about how Expression is achieving its mission, how the school can keep evolving to keep abreast of changes yet to come in the digital world, and how critical issues such as artistic freedom, social justice and environmental sustainability should impact the directions in which the school will go. These additional advisors currently include:
John Perry Barlow, a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, former lyricist for the Grateful Dead (1971-95), and cofounder/Vice Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Woody Harrelson, known to most Americans as the actor who portrayed Woody Boyd, a bartender in the long-running TV hit “Cheers,” and subsequently as a leading Hollywood film actor. Off screen, Harrelson channels his energies into various environmental causes.
Derrick de Kerckhove, director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology in Toronto, dedicated to continuing the groundbreaking work in communications theory begun by the late Marshall McLuhan.
John Meyer, president and founder of Meyer Sound Laboratories, head-quartered in Berkeley, Calif., whose sophisticated sound reinforcement products are used in a wide variety of the best performance and recording venues in the world - including Expression. Expression teaches three courses of study: Digital Visual Media, Sound Arts and Web Design and Development. Students who complete the intense, 14-month program are expected to be ready to sieze coveted positions in Hollywood special effects shops, professional recording studios, corporate media departments and a wide range of Internet, multimedia and entertainment industries.

Expression calls its intensive brand of education “total immersion.” Students attend classes an average of 45 hours a week - three hours a day in classroom studies and six more hours a day in hands-on laboratory instruction. The courses continue for 14 months, leading to an associate’s degree. Those who choose to can continue for at least another 12 months in three other courses of study (Digital Visual Media, Sound Arts, or Web Design and Development), as well as in a number of on-line courses, in pursuit of a Bachelor of Applied Sciences Degree.

About Expression College for Digital Arts
Founded in 1999, Expression is a unique, fully licensed digital arts college. Expression College for Digital Arts teaches and grants Bachelor degrees in three programs: Sound Arts; Digital Visual Media (comprising 3DAnimation and Visual Effects); and Digital Graphic Design (emphasizing Broadcast Design and Motion Graphics.) Expression utilizes a professional accelerated program and students live and learn in the culture of digital arts for approximately 2.5 years. Each class is limited to a small number of students to insure excellent and hands-on learning and the student to computer ratio is one-to-one. Students are taught by and work with the best practitioners and equipment that the industry can offer. Expression’s close ties to top industry professionals provide students with real-world client projects, mentorship and internship opportunities and a top-rated career development track that has resulted in a 80+% placement rate for graduates. When graduates leave their Expression family behind, they are prepared to assume sought-after jobs in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and other art and high technology centers around the world. Expression College is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Career Schools and Colleges of Technology, (ACCSCT).

Expression College for Digital Arts’ campus is located in an imagination-inspiring 85,000-square-foot building, at 6601 Shellmound St. in Emeryville, Calif., just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. For more information, please visit Expression’s Website at: www.expression.edu.

Contact:
Karen Wertman, Director of Marketing
Expression College for Digital Arts

Expression College for Digital Arts Website
www.expression.edu