ORONO – After 14 years of running a Portland-based Web design company, Rick Corey was ready for a life change.

The 37-year-old Bangor High School graduate seems to have found such a change in Owen Smith’s intermedia program at the University of Maine.

“Things had started to taper down and I felt like I was starting to lose touch with my creativity,” Corey said recently. “When this opportunity came up, it [seemed like a] great way to get involved with a bunch of people who are working on their own in different creative projects.”

Not only does the program represent a life change for Corey, but he’ll also get a master’s degree out of the experience.

University of Maine System trustees approved on Monday the intermedia Master of Fine Arts program, which is believed to be just the second program of its kind in the nation.

The only other school in the country to have a program similar to UMaine’s is the University of Iowa, according to Smith, an art and new media professor who has developed the intermedia program in the last five to six years.

Other schools use the term “intermedia” to describe their new media programs, Smith said, but UMaine uses the term to reflect work that falls between traditional art, new media and other disciplines.

“We felt in the end we wanted to do something that wasn’t limited to new media, but focused instead on a hybrid approach,” Smith said. “The emphasis is on creative thinking, development and implementation.”

The hybrid element of the degree is key to the intermedia concept as students make the program their own.

Some focus on traditional art forms with an emphasis on environmental issues. Others will look at art and new media and the relationship to business. Another student wants to explore multimedia children’s education tools to eventually develop new children’s books.

Corey, who gave away many of his clients and moved back to Bangor in order to enroll in the program, will explore new ways to use the Internet, along with doing some painting and sculpture.

“[The program] allows for a variety of directions,” Smith said. “[Students] start by saying, ‘I’m an intelligent person, the world out there has many opportunities and issues. What do I want to say, who do I want to say it too, and how do I want to say it?’ It’s not about traditional media, but combining or recombining existing fields of knowledge and technology.”

The trustees’ approval came at a time when Smith had 18 students already working on their degrees with the understanding that if the MFA hadn’t been approved, they likely would have continued with master’s degrees in liberal studies.

Now that the MFA is a sure thing, the students will go through an application process for the new three-year, 60-credit MFA program. Smith said he’s going to try to carry over as many students as possible.

An MFA is considered a terminal degree, Smith said, which qualifies graduates for a full range of professional opportunities, including college and university teaching.

“This does sort of increase the opportunities for students, including those who are thinking they’d like to do college- or university-level teaching,” Smith said.

The degree will be studio-centered. Third-year students will exhibit their theses at the annual Without Borders festival, which is held early each fall at the University of Maine.

Intermedia faculty are drawn from a range of disciplines throughout the university, including art, new media, theater, philosophy, engineering, communications and natural sciences.

Corey’s biggest challenge so far has been making the transition back to academia, although he’d like to use his MFA someday to teach. Corey said he’d be prepared no matter what he does in three years.

“I’ve been unbelievably impressed with what Owen and others have done,” Corey said. “It is remarkable, and exactly the way any master’s program should be run. For the state, it’s one heck of a feather in their cap. There are a lot of corporate eyes watching that place now.”

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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