AET VOCATIONAL SCHOOL OVERVIEW
 
SAVE SMC FEATURED ARTICLES
(Academy of Entertainment and Technology Overview)
   Table of Contents:   Scandals  |   History  |   Family Guy  |   Industry Partners  |   Internships & Jobs  |
   Questionable Sabbaticals  |   Map  |   Faculty  |   Hate Crimes  |  Career Fair Flyer  |   Deceptive Advertising  |
   Computer Theft  |   Enrollment Figures  |   Free Parking  |
   See Also:   AET Donations, Grants, and Consultants  |   AET Certificates and Courses  |
AET HISTORY AND GENERAL INFORMATION
 
A Brief History of AET   [Go to: AET DONORS]
AET Logo Circa 1999
So, what was Hope Boonshaft's role in establishing AET? Which state grants did she secure for the alleged purpose of building a "trained digital workforce?" Did Boonshaft help to secure the $1.25 million infusion of state funds from then Governor Pete Wilson? Why did an animation vocational school hire two former presidential advisors as key consultants? Was it their ability to lobby in Washington, D.C. that made them appealing? Read More ...  [TOP]
 
Academy of Entertainment and Technology Faculty   [Go to: ABOUT JIM KEESHEN]
AET Professor James Reilly
Seven years later in 2006, only 6 of the 34 AET professors continue to teach Entertainment Technology courses. That's only a fifth of the original names left. That's a very poor retention rate of what SMC had referred to as qualified industry professionals. Where's the commitment to the AET program? Why did these individuals leave? Many AET instructors ran outside consultant firms for their own financial benefit. Read More ...  [TOP]
 
Where are All the SMC AET Internships and Jobs?   [Go to: INTERNSHIP & HIRE RECORDS]
Non-existent AET Internships
AET's Alumni webpage only lists one graduate from AET working in the industry: Steve Rembuskos. The fact that AET Dean Katharine Muller is also begging for "donations of equipment and software" as well as "financial contribution[s]" from "an individual or company" should throw up a huge red flag for any prospective student considering enrolling in the AET program. Where are all those high-paying jobs AET promised? Read More ...  [TOP]

 
AET Advisory Board and Industry Partnerships   [Go to: INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIP CHART]
AET Industry Partners
"The Advisory Board will help design the curriculum, provide internships, serve as guest lecturers or adjunct faculty, provide in-service training for SMC faculty, and assist in the acquisition of equipment and the design of the facility." It sounded impressive, but as then AET Chairman Bill Lancaster admitted: "We need to become more active with industry partners. Currently, industry partners do not do more than serve on advisory boards." Read More ...  [TOP]
 
Pruning the Tree of Knowledge   [Go to: MULLER'S LETTER BEGGING FOR VTEA FUNDS]
Non-existent AET students
Again, where are the enrollment figures for each semester since the Academy's inception in 1997? And where's the bills and receipts for equipment bought allegedly with the help of then AET Chairman Jim Keeshen, Dean Katharine Muller, and Joan Abrahamson under VTEA funding? AET was to maintain a minimum enrollment of 500 full-time-equivalent students (FTES). Did AET either conceal low enrollment numbers or find ways in which to pad them to meet these minimum requirements? Read More ...  [TOP]

AET DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING PRACTICES
 
SMC AET Deceptive Advertising Practices   [Go to: AET PROMO PAMPHLETS]
AET Revised Promo Pamphlet
Let's compare the actual AET advisory board members from the two respective flyers. Notice the drop off of entertainment industry partners in the revised flyer. Shouldn't the AET program be growing, not decaying, especially with all that infusion of state and federal funds? If it's allegedly providing all these lucrative jobs to its students, shouldn't its alleged "prestige" be increasing rather than diminishing? See all those familiar names such as John Brooks, Todd Hess, Bob Hoffman, and Terry Thoren? Read More ...  [TOP]
 
SMC AET 2001 Career Fair Flyer and Advertising   [Go to: INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIP CHART]
AET 2001 Career Fair Flyer
On or about May 17, 2001, SMC put out a flashy color flyer entitled Career Fair. Regardless of the promises made by AET in 2001, the AET entertainment industry partners made a mass exodus by 2002. As of 2006, only a handful of industry professionals still sit on the AET advisory board. Yet, Gloria Mottler, Katharine Muller, Jim Keeshen and Bill Lancaster remain in their lucrative high paying positions. Meanwhile, the promises of "immediate employment" have vanished from AET's current mission statement. Read More ...  [TOP]
 
How AET Has Become The $8.8 Million Parking Lot   [Go to: ENROLLMENT PROBLEMS]
SMC Ad for Free Parking at AET
The final clue to the ever-dwindling SMC enrollment is the free parking offered on the AET campus. SMC prominently displays on its home page the following in capital red letters: "FREE STUDENT SHUTTLE PARKING AT THE ACADEMY CAMPUS." At first, this seems rather generous of SMC, but this has nothing to do with generosity, but the fact that the AET satellite campus not only offers very few courses; it can't even fill those courses to capacity. As several people have stated, AET has become a ghost town. Read More ...  [TOP]
AET SCANDALS
 
Family Guy Scandal and Lawsuit   [Go to: FAMILY GUY DATABASE]
Family Guy Lawsuit
In spring 2006, Jim Keeshen published online in his ET2 Storytelling course syllabus that he both produced and directed the Family Guy pilot pitch. The credits to the pilot clearly state that it was "created, written & directed by Seth MacFarlane." To make matters worse, Keeshen passed out copies of the Family guy scripts, calling them a "piece of shit." And Jim Keeshen did all of this after he sued Seth MacFarlane and Fox Broadcasting Company. Read More ...  [TOP]
 
Santa Monica College Sex Scandals   [Go to: PART 1 or PART 2]
David Javelosa Flaunting Himself on the AET Website
David Javelosa is a full-time professor of interactive media at Santa Monica College's Academy of Entertainment and Technology. He used the school's server to upload secret webpages of himself, his son, and his new age music, clogging up both bandwidth and space. Under the assumed name of David Microwave, he advertised himself and his site to his underaged friends on MySpace. Does this 52 year-old man have no shame? Read More ...  [TOP]

 
The Sims Hot Date: Katharine Muller's Romantic Getaway   [Go to: MULLER'S SALARY]
Sims Hot Date
On July 13, 2005, AET Dean Katharine Muller and Steve Seabolt, Human Resources VP for Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA), took a little romantic getaway to the ECS under the guise of participating in the Workforce Development for the Creative Economy. Why was she helping her buddies to secure funding for AET's rival school in Floria? According to Jim Keeshen, ""Well EA said to us that they're not really interested in anybody other than USC." Read More ...  [TOP]
 
SMC Crime Alert: AET Computer Theft   [Go to: SMC CRIME REPORTS]
Surveillance Photo of AET Computer Theft
On November 3, 2006, three unknown suspects allegedly burglarized the AET computer lab, stealing several expensive Dell computers. The surveillance photos caught the suspects red-handed, although so far the SMCPD hasn't been able to retrieve the stolen property. Perhaps if Santa Monica College wasn't so busy misusing its campus police force against its students, it might have been able to protect its students from this type of violent crime. Read More ...  [TOP]
QUESTIONABLE AET SABBATICALS
 
Professor Bill Lancaster's Questionable Sabbatical   [Go to: LANCASTER'S SALARY]
Bill Lancaster with Glora Mottler at SMC Resource Fair
The last sentence of William Lancaster's biography stands out: "Bill maintains a freelance practice that specializes in typographic and logotype design." Compare this to the Board of Trustees' sabbatical approval: "Through this sabbatical, he will further his personal knowledge of typography and type design." So, is this sabbatical truly undertaken to benefit the SMC community or to benefit Lancaster's freelance typography business? Read More ...  [TOP]
 
Jim Keeshen's Fall 2003 Sabbatical   [Go to: SMC SABBATICAL APPLICATIONS]
Klasky Csupo
According to SMC's guidelines, a report by AET Professor Jim Keeshen was to be filed within 60 days of the completion of the sabbatical. Two years later, Robert Sammis confirmed that Keeshen never filed a sabbatical report. Was Keeshen's sabbatical a semester-long paid vacation for him? What was his relationship with Klasky Csupo CEO Terry Thorne? Did the sabbatical provide job opportunities to AET students as promised? We'll never know, as Sammis refuses to disclose Keeshen's orginal sabbatical application. Read More ...  [TOP]
READ KEY PROFILES OR SEARCH THE AET DATABASE
GO TO: AET DONATIONS, GRANTS & CONSULTANTS  New  OR  AET CERTIFICATES AND COURSES  New

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The SAVE SMC Blog and Website are not affiliated with nor endorsed by Santa Monica College. Des Manttari is a current student at SMC's Academy of Entertainment and Technology (AET), studying video game development and animation. She has been a teaching assistant for the AET courses: Storytelling and History of Animation. Ms. Mantttari was a former legal publisher and paralegal for many years.

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COMMENTS   more comments icon

"At SMC, management uses its profit in several ways. One is to replicate itself through the hiring of more and more managers. Another is to acquire as many as new sites as possible, all of which require more and more management. A third is to hire as many lawyers as possible, all to help guard the profits and acquire more sites. (The college now uses a baker's dozen law firms.) A fourth is to hire as many consultants as possible, whose sole purpose is to think up ways for managers to use more and more profit. A fifth is to pay for overpriced services like eCollege and PeopleSoft. Finally, after all that profit is spent on these management luxuries, management then claims that the college is too poor to settle a fair contract with the faculty."

-- Lantz Simpson, SMC Faculty Association President [April 2006, How SMC Is Run Like WAL-MART]

QUOTES   more comments icon

"Neither Mr. Keeshen, nor Mr. Javelosa have credentials to be teaching. They do not have an academic educational background, nor do they have the substantial industry experience in training and supervising personnel to qualify to be Vocational instructors. Neither of these men have the moral or educational requirements to be proper leaders for these young students on the AET campus."

-- Margaret Wick [former Vocational School Board Trustee]

"I don't care about Julie Yarrish and I don't care about [Winniphred] Stone and I don't care about [Judith] Penchansky. I have to live with them because we're swimming in the same pond."

-- AET Professor Jim Keeshen [Re: His SMC Colleagues]

"BTW, we ALL got screwed by the whole family guy thing, first during the pilot and then to top it off, when they put it on DVD and we got screwed with no credit again.. nice eh?"

-- Bob Paulson [AET graduate]

"I graduated from Santa Monica College with my AA degree on June 12. ... The whole event was rather depressing, and a portent of things to come."

-- Anonymous [June 19, 2001]

"I'll leave on my own terms when I want to leave. Right now I'm just using them so that I can finish my film."

-- Jim Keeshen [Re: SMC and his "Day of the Dead" animated film]
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