North Carolina School of the Arts consists of several art schools. I teach at the School of Design and Production. D&P teaches mainly theatrical technology and design, but our graduates work in all corners of the entertainment industry.
I started teching at the school in 2003 and started a Lighting Technology program. The program focusses (pun intended) on the ability for the student to be a lighting technician for any production of any size and budget. Students are taught basic skills such as soldering and how to work with moving lights, but further they are expected to be good communicators and exceptional organizers.
While we do not have an extensive moving light inventory (some other schools do), we instead do a moving light seminar every year. We try and introduce new units and new consoles every time we do the seminar.
Recently, the school produced West Side Story. In the lighting department we implemented VL3500s, 2 Hippotizers, 4 projectors, an ETC Eos and a number of other more popular technologies to make the production a success.
The average Lighting Technology graduate is able to organize and lead large crews in a theater or shop situation. Adapt the the requirements of new programming languages to work with any console. Our graduates have exposure at one time or another to as many consoles and modern lighting instrumentation as possible. Further the introduction last year to projections and media servers to the program make it extrodinary and perhaps unique in that we are a state-funded institution with no major sponsor.