On October 13th, Professor Walter Behr gave a personal tour at the new studio, Zendel Hall.
Professor Behr is the coordinator of Communications Degree Programs given at Passaic County Community College. Behr has been working at Passaic County Community College for 7 years and noticed how the Communications program students were growing academically but did not have the facilities to teach what the students needed in order to properly learn the field.
To solve this, Behr started to work on the A.A.S. degree around 2014, which was not available before. The State of New Jersey approved the program in 2017 and provided grant money to buy new equipment.
During this time, the building was owned by David Zendel, but once the Zendel family learned that Professor Behr would need the building for the program they decided to donate it to Passaic County Community College.
The building was suitable to house classrooms and build a full studio with all the equipment that was needed. With the help of the director of facilities and an architect, Behr designed what now is Zendel Hall.
The new Zendel Hall now supplies PCCC students video production facilities, including 18 editing stations in the classroom, a full studio with a control room to do live streaming of various types of broadcasts. This full studio now gives students two different degrees options.
The first degree, which is the Associate in Arts in Communication, which prepares students who want to pursue a bachelor’s degree and transfer to 4-year colleges, and the second degree, the A.S.S. prepares students to graduate and get a job after 2 years.
The acquirement of the Zendel Hall and its renovation has significantly improved the Communication’s Program at PCCC. Currently, PCCC is in the process of building a podcast studio, so students can create audio podcast that would lead to a college radio station, ideally.
Also, students are now learning to use the equipment, the studio, and each semester they prepare actual newscasts that any student on campus can participate in if they are interested, regardless of their major.