NMI New Home

The NMI is back on campus in a new home in the Journalism building. And it rocks!

For seven years, the New Media Institute was housed in the Bank of America Building in downtown Athens. When the NMI was created in 2000, there simply was no place for the NMI on campus. So we made necessity a virtue. Being in downtown allowed us to do things we couldn’t do on campus (like the WAGZone) and it made it easier for non-University people to learn about us. That was cool. But, in truth, running an academic unit off-campus was never easy for us or the students. We weren’t near any other academic buildings where students were taking classes. Students had to arrive 5 to 10 minutes late to NMIX courses in the BoA – that is a big chunk out of a 50-minute class. Plus there wasn’t any student parking nearby. That meant lots of those nasty little yellow envelops on student windshields when they had to park at the meters.

And, selfishly, all the staff of the NMI has been a little lonely. Being downtown put us closer to good coffee and other beverages, but farther from our academic colleagues and friends. For everyone at the NMI truly connecting, consulting, and collaborating with UGA from a distance was difficult.

But now we are back home in the Journalism building and it is great to be right in the heart of campus. The NMI suite on the fourth floor houses our classroom, development laboratory, and all our offices. The dean of the Grady College, Cully Clark, allocated this awesome space and a host of people from the Grady Business Office down to UGA Physical Plant made the move possible. Thanks to all of them.

We are still swimming in a sea of boxes now – it will be weeks before we are totally operational. But in the first few weeks of the Fall semester, we are looking forward to hosting an open house. So watch for it.

Our email addresses will be the same (nmi@uga.edu). But my phone number is now 706.542.2857.