$1.35M gift creates Midco Media Campus & Production Center at Augustana, increases athletics sponsorship

Jan. 27, 2021

This paid piece is sponsored by Augustana University.

A tech sandbox.

That’s what Augustana University and Midco were hoping to create when the idea for the Midco Media Campus & Production Center was born.

“Here’s what a tech sandbox looks like,” said Dr. Peter Folliard, dean of the School of Music.

“It looks like having a bunch of curriculum geared towards production — audio, video and music production — in which we can educate our students and our community. There’s opportunities for community members to engage with not only education in their chosen discipline, but also receive training in emerging multimedia hardware and software platforms. This would be a project that would be unique that would put us on the map.”

Enhancing its long-standing partnership with Augustana by investing in Viking Bold: The Journey to 2030, Midco has committed $1.35 million to the university to make the Midco Media Campus & Production Center a reality and to renew and enlarge its athletics sponsorship.

“Midco’s ethos is to be a force for good in the communities we serve, and this gift is a testament to that ethos,” said Midco president and CEO Pat McAdaragh. “We’re proud to partner with Augustana University in support of its visionary Viking Bold strategic plan that will provide more opportunities for its students and graduates to contribute broadly to society, all while making a daily positive impact in the community and region.”

The Midco Media Campus & Production Center on Augustana’s campus will provide audio, video and music training and programming through the Avid Learning Partner program, as well as facilitate the development of a recently faculty-approved multimedia entrepreneurship major with the opportunity to combine majors in English, journalism, communications, media studies, religion, visual arts, music and business. The production center will not only provide opportunities for Augustana students, but also will serve as a training hub for K-12 students and aspiring professionals — either in person or virtually — throughout the region.

“Higher education can do so much more for musicians because right now, most universities only prepare them to teach or maybe perform for the rest of their lives, and realistically that’s only one piece of the pie,” Folliard said.

“There’s an entire industry of music and art, sound, video, creativity and administration that are all part of the larger pieces. The skills that are needed to exist and survive as a musician, performer, creative artist in the 21st century include performance, teaching, composition, as well as the video and audio production. We need to close the gap between where higher education ends and professional employment for musicians begins.”

Along with the learning component, the production center will offer state-of-the-art equipment and a centralized production control room that will improve the efficiency and quality of broadcasts from athletics to the arts, and transform the experiential learning for students as they encounter new technology, platforms and emerging ideas.

“This is another great example of finding ways to differentiate Augustana from others, and there’s not a better partner to do that with than Midco,” said director of athletics Josh Morton. “Once we are up and running, our fans will appreciate the state-of-the-art live production quality and pre-produced content as much as they appreciate the competitive excellence they’ve come to expect from our teams.”

“No matter if it’s dynamic teaching happening in the classroom, amazing athletics happening on the field or a beautiful performance that’s happening in the (Hamre) Recital Hall. In that central hub, there will be a team of people that are able to run the whole show, capture it all and create wonderful content to share with a larger audience than just those who can be in person in Sioux Falls at that time,” Folliard said.

Because of the new opportunities that soon will be provided by Midco’s leadership gift, Gilbert DeWitte, class of 2024, chose Augustana over prestigious music conservatories around the nation.

The Sioux Falls native started playing the piano at the age of 3 and taking cello lessons with an Augustana professor in fourth grade. While DeWitte’s mother, a dentist, is an Augustana alumna, he said he also wanted to carve his own path.

“It was actually the summer after my sophomore year. I went to Sydney, Australia, and I performed at the Sydney Opera House and actually soloed there. That was kind of the switch toward, ‘OK, I’m doing music full-time now,’ ” DeWitte said.

DeWitte began declaring Augustana’s new multimedia entrepreneurship program as his major even before it officially was approved and offered to students. 

Augustana

“There’s just not many schools that provide these top-notch (Avid) certifications that basically allow you to go right out of school with your bachelor’s degree straight to whatever industry you want. You could work in LA at one of the big record labels. You could go to Nashville and make whatever music you want. You could go to Atlanta and try to be the next big rap artist,” said DeWitte.

“It makes Augustana extremely unique. Only a couple of major conservatories provide all these factors at such a high level.”

Already having taken most of the prerequisites, DeWitte will be one of the first students to dive into the new major in the fall of 2021. The freshman said it would be great to be the next big star, but knowing that he has to make money at the end of the day, his dream job is to work as a producer at a production label — something that’s now a possibility after earning an undergraduate degree.

And DeWitte has already gotten a taste of the possibilities at the university after helping with the making of Augustana Christmas Vespers, a long-standing annual tradition at the university that features the School of Music’s four choirs, orchestra and band. 

“If we had just tried to do Vespers as we know it, it’s over. We’ll see you next year. And that’s the last thing that this world needed was one more opportunity that got shut down because of the pandemic,” Folliard said.

“Take, for example, the Super Bowl halftime show. Since the 1990s, it has been a lip-synced performance. It’s too large (of a production) and too short of a time to involve all of the equipment needed to happen — to succeed in that physical space, but also on television as it does. Everything there is pre-recorded. So I took that idea and said we can do this … and then using the internet as our tool to share this with an even bigger audience. And at the end, we captured the very best of what our students can give, and then we mixed that in post-production. Then we did that ‘Milli Vanilli’ idea of lip-syncing to our own performance in a video recording. From everything that I’ve seen, this is the most progressive effort to perform in the pandemic — it’s production value at a level of 10. We just switched the model and said, ‘Cool, we’ll just bring it to you.’ ”

But Folliard said these new opportunities aren’t just for music majors. 

“You’ve got the newest skills and certifications plus the critical thinking component, which is what employers are really looking for. That’s what this program looks to do for all creative fields: communications, media studies, religion. The program teaches students the software skills to share all of what they’re doing with the world so that in a pandemic they can survive, or in fact, even thrive. Now you know how to engage the world, and that’s where we are living now, in a digital space,” he said.

Folliard said the goal is to have not only students, but also business professionals knocking at Augustana’s door — offering internships. And not just any internships though, competitive paid internships at a level in which the university struggles to keep up with demand.

Prospective students wanting to know more about Augustana are encouraged to visit augie.edu/admission or email the Augustana Office of Admission.

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$1.35M gift creates Midco Media Campus & Production Center at Augustana, increases athletics sponsorship

Midco has committed $1.35 million to Augustana University to make the Midco Media Campus & Production Center a reality and to renew and enlarge its athletics sponsorship.

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