Added by 1 member
Founded in 1885—just twelve years after Vanderbilt University—Watkins Institute was one of Nashville’s oldest schools. But by the early 1990s, Watkins was floundering, deeply in debt, and barely managing to keep the doors open. In a desperate attempt to save the school, the Board of Trust decided to turn Watkins into a ‘real’ college—a college that focused on the visual arts and would include, of all things, a film production program.
That film program would become the Watkins Film School, the first film school in Tennessee. When it opened in the Fall of 1995, mystery writer/screenwriter Steven Womack was the first faculty member hired. For the next twenty-five years he anchored the screenwriting program, while also serving five years as Chair of the Film School
In 2020, after nearly a decade of declining enrollment, mismanagement, and devastating financial struggles, The Watkins College of Art closed its doors permanently.
Womack’s heartfelt and heartbreaking memoir of his quarter-century as a film school professor is a tribute to what was a noble but ultimately doomed mission. It also reads like the treatment to a movie—a tragic drama with its share of heroes and villains, conflicts and dilemmas, hills and valleys.
DEATH OF A COLLEGE is also a cautionary tale about the threats facing small colleges across the country. Higher education is in trouble—experts predict that half the colleges in America are going to close—and the story of Watkins College of Art and the Watkins Film School is a microcosm of much larger problems that all colleges are facing.
That film program would become the Watkins Film School, the first film school in Tennessee. When it opened in the Fall of 1995, mystery writer/screenwriter Steven Womack was the first faculty member hired. For the next twenty-five years he anchored the screenwriting program, while also serving five years as Chair of the Film School
In 2020, after nearly a decade of declining enrollment, mismanagement, and devastating financial struggles, The Watkins College of Art closed its doors permanently.
Womack’s heartfelt and heartbreaking memoir of his quarter-century as a film school professor is a tribute to what was a noble but ultimately doomed mission. It also reads like the treatment to a movie—a tragic drama with its share of heroes and villains, conflicts and dilemmas, hills and valleys.
DEATH OF A COLLEGE is also a cautionary tale about the threats facing small colleges across the country. Higher education is in trouble—experts predict that half the colleges in America are going to close—and the story of Watkins College of Art and the Watkins Film School is a microcosm of much larger problems that all colleges are facing.
Used availability for Steven Womack's Death of a College