Left Behind: Chrysler's Newark Assembly Plant, Past, Present & Future

In December, 2008, one of the east coast’s last remaining automobile manufacturing facilities closed after nearly 60-years of operations. This undergraduate students’ program captures the microcosm of national implications of the plant closing and the auto industry’s decline, and its impact on their community - and their university - which surround the plant. Students reveal the plant’s heyday, its promise for the university’s future, and its legacy of accomplishment and pollution. Their three-month investigation takes viewers inside the padlocked Newark Assembly Plant. Students discover its patriotic contribution to the Cold War, the economic boom it brought to a sleepy Delaware town, a major fire in the paint shop which led to millions of dollars in safety improvements, and six decades of persistent chemical contamination, left behind in the soil, water and air around the plant long after global economic trends forced it to close. Students in the University of Delaware’s “Broadcast News Documentary” class, COMM/POSC425, devote an entire semester to researching, developing and producing a single-subject investigative program. Undergraduates report, write, design and edit the program. Faculty instructor: Ralph J. Begleiter