Remote education may seem like a 21st century advancement, but its roots on campus go back to UNLV's early years.
Back in 1969, when Maude Frazier Hall anchored the campus, Tony Messina was a student earning an electronics degree at UNLV. UNLV was still being called Nevada Southern University that year, and some of its nascent programs, like nursing, relied on faculty expertise some 440 miles away at the University of Nevada, Reno. Correspondence classwork wouldn't do.
Messina was lucky enough to experience the transformation of a back patio in Frazier Hall into a state-of-the-art TV studio dedicated to teaching. He kept photos and records, now housed in UNLV Special Collections & Archives, of the project.
This studio, he says, made it possible to connect nursing students in Las Vegas with their counterparts in Reno via a live broadcast. It just took a lot more space and equipment than any online class delivered via Zoom today.
“While the new brick structure contained the studio and office," says Messina, "the control room for the television facility was created with a glass wall along the main hallway, toward the front entrance of the building and next to one of the university administrative offices."
That view, according to Messina, was intended to demonstrate to visitors that the studio was "a technology showcase."
At the studio, Messina frequently provided maintenance and adjustments to the equipment and assisted with class productions by shading cameras or operating the two-inch tape Ampex VR1100 quadruplex videotape recorder.
He can still list off the equipment, like a JAN type 16mm film projector, a Cohu monochrome TV camera, a Gates Dualux audio mixing board, and an optical slide/film chain that incorporated a Spindler Sauppe slide projector,
“The film chain allowed either slides or film to be optically coupled to a TV camera, making it possible to incorporate films and slides into the video programming,” explains Messina. “Either the slide projector or the film projector could be selected by a remotely controlled pivoting mirror.”
But, the “magical link,” he notes, was the Lenkurt microwave system. It sent the TV signals back and forth between the two campuses, bringing the two classrooms together.
“Through this link, the two studios in Las Vegas and Reno were patched into a private microwave channel in the network during the time our classes were in session.”
A lot of thought and detail went into the construction of the studio. For example, the floor had to be made perfectly level, so that there were no uneven spots that might interfere with camera operation.
“If there were slopes of any kind,” recalls Messina, “the camera images would bounce on trucking shots — or worse, the camera could drift away from the operator. Those dolly wheels turn easily.”
Because of the monochrome TV format, studio lighting could be accomplished effectively with banks of special fluorescent lights. The Marconi Mark V studio TV cameras provided remarkable video images even if lighting wasn’t sufficient.
The studio's set was furnished with a hospital bed, lighting, mock hospital fixtures for connecting oxygen at the bedside, wheelchair, and other "props" relevant to nursing.
An audio connector box provided audio connections to the control room for studio microphones. Below the Tektronix type 529 waveform monitors was a Ball Brothers special effects generator, which allowed the screen to be split between two video sources. This made it possible to place a closeup of the instructor in one corner of the picture while the rest of the frame was filled by the students and classroom.
“The panel with three rows of buttons directly below the special effects generator is used to feed the signals to that generator. Another set of buttons are on the table mounted out from the rack,” says Messina. “Those buttons are the main programming switcher that switches and mixes the final program output.”
It's what he calls the sweet spot where the director would make decisions about camera placement, what they needed to frame their image on, and when to “take” that image and make it “live” in the program.
While the primary goal was to deliver nursing education, the studio was training ground for students like Messina, as well.
“When there were no nursing class activities scheduled, the studio facility would be used to train students in television production operations,” says Messina. “This gave the students hands-on television production experience, and gave us a pool of willing hands to meet the needs of our busy production schedules.”
On the sidelines of the broadcast, Messina often observed the nursing students interact over the shared link. He recalls how some topics could lead to emotional discussions between the students and the instructors at both campuses.
“These discussions were just as focused and direct as any complex face-to-face conversation you might see occurring across a table in a private meeting room,” says Messina, who earned his associates degree in 1971. “I felt at times that I had been ‘included’ in some very sensitive conversations and discussions… things that nurses and nursing students had to talk and learn about.”
It was from this point that he knew he was destined to work in educational television. “And I did,” says Messina. “For 30 years, until the day I finally retired.”
More About Maude Frazier Hall
Maude Frazier Hall — constructed in 1957 by Walter Zick and Harris Sharp Architects — is significant for being one the first building on UNLV's Maryland Parkway campus.
It was situated at the campus’ main entrance on Maryland Parkway and named in honor of enigmatic educator and former Nevada Lt. Governor Maude Frazier. As an assemblywoman in the 1950s, Frazier led both legislative and community efforts toward establishing the first public college in Southern Nevada.
After the building was torn down in 2009, Frazier was memorialized in bronze on Pioneer Wall. Read more about the UNLV historymakers on Pioneer Wall.
