Portland Community College is offering a niche new area of study this spring: UFOs.
“From Film to Real Life? UFOs, UAPs, Government and the Media” is an online class listed for non-credit in a category of study called “cultural exploration.” (Other offerings include low-cost Hawaii travel, foreign films and a “waterfalls and wine” tour of the Columbia River Gorge.)
The class is the brainchild of longtime local television news producer Brian Anslinger, the executive producer of KRCW’s lifestyle show Everyday Northwest. Previously, Anslinger worked as assistant news director and executive producer at KATU-TV.
Part of his mission with the class is to help students decode the confusing landscape of UAP sightings and research. (UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena, is the updated name for UFOs, unidentified flying objects. Anslinger accepts both.)
“Having been looking at this subject for a long time and different aspects of it, I thought, gosh, if you see what’s happening on Capitol Hill or read headlines, I don’t know how you make sense of what’s actually going on,” Anslinger says.