MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Althea Sumpter
Bridging the Gap Between Academe and the Real World
By Regina Osime

Atlanta Art Institute Professor, Dr. Althea Sumpter, enjoys keeping one foot in academe and one in the industry. While some of her students may come to her class expecting an easy grade, Althea says that she doesn’t cut them any slack and she views each student as a future crew member who needs to “come up to muster.” Althea diligently molds future multimedia professionals for 9 months out of the year, but she doesn’t use her summers off to lounge around. Instead, she spent this summer producing oral history interviews on the Atlanta-area Tuskegee Airmen for the National Park Service, managing a production of filmmaker Demetria Royals for the National Black Arts Festival, and editing a project for the School of Social Work at Georgia State University.

“When I was in the industry fulltime, I was a producer and editor,” Althea explained, “Nowadays, I like to work on projects that help me keep my skills alive and allow me to be flexible.”

Althea has managed to meld her lifelong passion for anthropology and media into her career by gaining extensive documentary film experience. One project that is dear to Althea’s heart is her research and documentation for the preservation of Gullah Culture, which is on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. As a Gullah descendent herself, she says she feels compelled to document as much about Gullah culture as possible before the elders die out. This project was also part of her dissertation for her Doctor of Arts in Humanities and Technology, which uses new media technology to document various cultures and preserve them on interactive media such as CD-ROM and DVD-ROM.

During Althea’s 15 years in the industry fulltime, she has produced a myriad of projects, including ones for Emory, Northeastern University, Georgia Public Access (when still the large 5-studio system in Atlanta) and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta. She received an Emmy nomination for the series Kingfest 1990, which was a long-running television concert series covering the King Center’s summer-long events throughout Atlanta in the 80s and early 90s. Her academic experience began at Clark Atlanta University where she was a professor for 7 1/2 years. She also taught at Georgia State University and American InterContinental University. Currently, Althea teaches Digital Video Production and Multimedia Ethnography at Georgia Tech. At first, her self-created Multimedia Ethnography class scared away a few students who may not have expected it to be so extensive, but she says she has garnered ample attention from other students who seem prepared for the challenge.

“The students who are really motivated - they are the ones I get really excited about. They remind me why I am a teacher,” She says “I really enjoyed the students that hung in there because we ended up having a great time.”

Althea is serving as MCA-I’s University Coordinator. She says the organization has given her a chance to explore what other people have in their production houses, find out what other people are doing and relate that back to her classes.

“If you want to stay alive in the industry, you have to know the new stuff," says Althea. "I am not a theorist, I am an applied researcher. I don’t just talk about what’s in a book, I talk about my experience.”

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