Since its inception in the fall of ’99, the Visionaries Institute at Suffolk University has graduated 48 philanthropy-minded video professionals.

Lynn Weissman (left) shoots for her work-in-progress, That’s the Ticket! while Bonnie Rosenbaum (right) runs boom pole at the 2002 Tour de Sol: Great American Green Transportation Festival in New York.

Since I first reported on the program in May 2001, 48 students have completed the 42-credit-hour curriculum and gone on to work in various segments of the video industry. Another 30 are on track to earn their degrees this August. With each graduating class, more philanthropy-minded people enter the profession, driven by their unmitigated enthusiasm and a strong desire to make a difference with their work.

Bonnie Rosenbaum, for example, was a member of the institute's first class, which graduated in August 2000. She was also the first recipient of the Waterston Fellowship, a merit-based full scholarship to the institute that's sponsored by Sam Waterston, host of the PBS series The Visionaries. The institute was founded when series creator Bill Mosher went looking for production interns at his alma mater, Suffolk University. Three years later, part of the institute's training still involves working on the set of the PBS series.

Since learning video production at the institute, Rosenbaum has been working at Roundtable Media, a Waltham, Mass.-based production company that creates “public engagement media.” In her role as an editorial project coordinator, she hires editors and production staff for the group's projects, which typically combine video and multimedia material with interactive public outreach campaigns.

Rosenbaum says the institute's intensive one-year curriculum was exactly what she needed to break into documentary video. “It was definitely an entryway into this field,” she says. “It's a very hands-on, do-it-yourself program. They're very big on the experiential side.”

Although Rosenbaum is not a full-time production person, she still works in the edit room from time to time, scripting and editing compilation videos of Roundtable's projects. She has also worked on projects for her friend and fellow Visionaries alum Lynn Weissman, who was the second recipient of the Waterston Fellowship.

Today, Weissman is a freelance editor and camera operator working mostly with nonprofits in the Boston area. After graduation she purchased a Sony DSR-PD150, as well as her own lighting kit and sound equipment. She's using them to shoot her 30-minute documentary when she's not on assignment.

“I've used all of the skills that I studied at the institute, even some that I never thought I would use,” says Weissman. “I didn't think I would like doing camera work before I got there. Now I own my own camera, and I'm shooting my own project.”

Weissman has shot about 25 hours of footage for her video documentary titled That's the Ticket! It's an offbeat look at the debate surrounding SUVs, and takes its title from a Boston group's campaign of placing mock parking tickets on SUVs to ridicule the owners of the vehicles for damaging the environment.

“It's a social change documentary,” says Weissman, who worked as a public health researcher before enrolling at the institute in August 2000. “It's easier to take those messages to the public through the media, whereas public health research doesn't always reach the public. Attending the institute was a way for me to continue to do social work but have more of an impact.”