After three years of teaching at Tufts, Roberta Oster Sachs, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Media and Public Service (MPS) program, will be departing the University at the end of this semester.
She will assume the position of Associate Dean of External Relations at the University of Richmond's School of Law.
"Teaching Tufts students has been hard work, but very inspiring," Oster Sachs said. "It has been the best three years of my career."
Oster Sachs, a former producer for ABC, CBS and NBC News, is well-known for her popular "Producing Films for Social Change" class, in which students develop and produce documentaries focused on current affairs and social issues.
The class has only been offered for six semesters but has accomplished a great deal, said Communications and Media Studies director Julie Dobrow.
"It has developed into a fabulous experience for those students lucky enough to get into the class," Dobrow said. "The films students have produced have a shelf life beyond the class - they are shown by non-profit organizations, and they've started to have some success at film festivals."
One film, "From the Fryer to the Freeway: Alternative Energy Today," won third place in the College Television Awards, the college version of the Emmy awards.
The film was co-produced by freshman Sean Malahy, and seniors Emi Norris, Phil Martin and Assaf Pines. (Pines is also an editorialist for the Daily).
The New England Institute of Art honored another film with a first place award in its Naked Eye Student Film Festival.
This documentary, "Melanie's Legacy: a Grandfather's Fight against Drunk Driving" was co-produced by seniors Leah Tucker and Valerie Chin, as well as sophomores Eli Netter and Jen Bokoff.
Dobrow said Oster Sachs' past experience and commitment to the CMS program have helped it to grow dramatically.
"Her dedication to issues of using media for positive social change has helped to lay the foundations for a Media and Public Service minor we are launching," Dobrow said.
"Roberta is very dedicated to her students," she said. "She spends an amazing amount of time and invests an incredible amount of energy in them," including serving as mentor and career counselor for many students entering media-related fields.
According to Dobrow, Oster Sachs has also proved an asset to CMS faculty.
"Roberta has been not only a wonderful colleague, but has also become one of my closest friends," Dobrow says. "In a world that's often characterized by a sense of just getting by, Roberta's upbeat perspective is one that all of us should cherish."
Students describe the documentary-making class as a dynamic, interactive atmosphere.
Oster Sachs, for example, insists that students call her by her first name. "It's amazing how speaking to her on the same level as everyone else changes the dynamic of the class," Malahy said. "We speak much more freely and really discuss our thoughts."
Oster Sachs said that she seeks to create professional atmospheres. "We run our classroom like a newsroom, so I act less as a professor and more as an executive producer," Oster Sachs said. "I try to treat the whole class as fellow producers and professionals."
"This is the only class I've ever taken in which I felt comfortable to argue a point with a professor and win," Tucker said.
Oster Sachs also uses undergraduates as her Teaching Assistants (TA). Her two TA's this semester are Malahy and Tucker.
This atmosphere of openness allows for a fast learning curve and significant freedom to explore the subject in question.
"Being a student in the class last term, I literally learned how to produce a film," Tucker said. "I had done a little at TUTV but had no journalism experience."
Tucker said that Oster Sachs' class gave her complete freedom over her work. "I'm probably not going to have nearly as much control over anything I'm going to work on for a while, but this class skyrockets you to the top of the production chain," she said. "It lets you do anything."
"I'm a professional journalist who's become a teacher," Oster Sachs said. "I can break the rules because I'm not a traditional professor."
Oster Sachs strives for a more open-minded classroom, Malahy said. "She encourages students to try new approaches and be open to other thoughts."
Tucker echoed this sentiment, "We screen each others' works in progress. Everyone gets to have a say in what everyone else is doing."
Oster Sachs, who has taught previously at Princeton and Columbia, said Tufts students are different from others she has taught.
"Tufts students are really smart," she said. "[They] are willing to take risks, think outside the box, willing to be controversial and sometimes be zealous, but they speak their mind. It's refreshing to work in an environment where people are willing to be so bold."
Oster Sachs recalled one snowy winter night when "a group of students was filming a story about homelessness in Harvard Square with their fingers freezing, holding the tripod in the cold, to get images of an issue they cared so much about."
Students can produce impressive results when given the opportunity, she said.
"I've learned that if you give young people the media tools and throw them out into the field or push them to go out into the world, they can create powerful films expressing their passion for social change," she said.
Larry Mahl (LA '05), a former student of Oster Sachs, said the film class "was a turning point for me at Tufts." Mahl now teaches filmmaking on an AmeriCorps teaching fellowship at an after-school program in the Boston area.
"I take the essence of Roberta's class and translate it for 6th and 7th graders," he said. "Unquestionably, taking her class really inspired me to follow a career path that involved documentary filmmaking."
Oster Sachs hopes to inspire her students to go into television, but highlighted the importance of learning about the media itself, describing media literacy and media ethics as the "two core foundations of all my courses at Tufts."
This semester, Oster Sachs also taught "Media Literacy: Through the Lens of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class" with Dobrow.
While Oster Sachs is sad to leave, she feels confident leaving the program in the hands of Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Margaret Lazarus, who will be teaching "Producing Films for Social Change" next semester.
Lazarus has produced numerous documentary films, including "Defending Our Lives," which detailed domestic violence and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary: Short Subject in 1994.
Oster Sachs plans to maintain connections to Tufts by continue consulting with Dobrow on the MPS program. She also plans to return to campus as a guest lecturer.
CORRECTION ADDED APR. 28, 2006:In yesterday's News article "Oster Sachs to leave Tufts" (Apr. 27, 2006), Emi Norris' class year was misidentified. She is a senior, not a junior.
