Josh Meredith's Blog

Most college professors have to get a bachelor’s degree in the discipline they would like to teach. Then, get a masters and sometimes even a doctoral degree in their field of study. Getting a doctorate usually takes up to an added 6 years of full time student work after obtaining a bachelor’s degree. So, one is looking at 10 extra years of schooling after high school to teach at a four year college. Mr. Dave Madsen took a completely different rout to becoming a professor and head of the mass communications department at Morningside College.

Mr. Madsen got his start in the mass comm world as a student at University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL). While attending UNL, he got his bachelor’s degree in journalism. After college, Madsen got a job in Sioux City working for the ABC TV station KCAU. He worked there as a for three years until he applied for the general manager position at the NBC station KTIV. He received the job and spent the next 29 years working at the station.

During that 29th year, Dave walked into the station and was surprised to hear the news that his position at the station was no longer needed. To him and his families dismay, Dave joined the ranks of the unemployed (though he was still received severance pay for the next 6 months).

For a day and a half, Dave wondering where to go. He always thought that he would retire as the general manager of KTIV. Then, he received a call for John Rynders, the president of Morningside College. The president offered him a job as a professor at Morningside College which Dave excepted.

So, it took Dave Madsen some 33 years of experience at television stations and a unfortunate day and a half of being unemployed to become a professor at Morningside College. Though it was never his intention to become a professor, he took a positive stance on the job change by saying, “Once one door closes, a window opens.”

Today, Dave seems to be enjoying his time at Morningside College. When asked if he would ever go back to a TV station, he stopped and thought for a little bit before saying, “Probably not, the stress levels I had while at KTIV where very high compared to the stress I have as a professor.”

Dave has continued his education by taking online classes during the night through UNL. Though he may not have recieved his an education to become a professor, he uses his experience in the field well to teach classes like Intro to Mass Comm, Public Relations, Media Management, and others. One of his goals at Morningside is to get students to run a weekly news cast in the studio at Morningside College.

Mass Comm students have a great resource in Dave. His experience, tutorship, and advice are a great for students to not only learn from him but also to get help getting their foot in the door for mass comm jobs in the Siouxland area.

Josh Meredith

Fundamentals of Journalism for Print and Web

Story/Article #2

10/6/2011

MCTV

After just one semester at Morningside College, one can easily realize one of the problems with MCTV is that few students outside of the department even know it exists. It needs more exposure outside of the students in the department but, it is up to the students to get it that exposure. Dave Madsen, head of the Mass Comm department is keeping MCTV alive, but there will come a time when the students of Morningside College will either make it thrive or make it a thought of the past.

The Morningside College mass communications department offers the opportunity for all students at Morningside to experience and experiment with all types of media outlets including writing for the Collegian Reporter (The Morningside College newspaper), having your own radio show on KMSC Fusion 93 (the student voice of Morningside College), and working at the Morningside College TV station, MCTV.

Many students participate in the radio station, KMSC. For one reason, it is a class requirement to have a radio show and be on the air for at least one hour in the Audio Production classes taught by Doctor Mark Heisted. It is common to hear students on the air as early as seven in the morning and as late as well past midnight. Doc Heisted said, “Though being on the air at first can be a nervous adventure, many students find out they truly enjoy working at KMSC.” There is a plethora of different reasons for this. Michelle Kuester, a sophomore at Morningside College, said, “My favorite part of being a radio DJ at Fusion 93 is having the freedom to play whatever I want. I am able to give my show an identity that is unlike any radio show in the Sioux City area.”

Unfortunately, MCTV does not share the same success. Mr. Madsen, in a class interview, said there are several reasons for this: “My goal for MCTV is to produce a weekly news cast is our studio, but right now we just don’t have enough students interested in that.” What Mr. Madsen means is that creating a news cast is different from KMSC where one person can go into a room and talk into a microphone and their voice is over the air and that is it. For a weekly news cast, there would need to be more than a few people to volunteer a couple of hours a week to fill the roles of a news anchor, sports anchor, weather anchor, a director, someone to run the audio, someone to run the teleprompter, and a couple of cameramen.

Mr. Madsen also said, “It is not up to me to make MCTV run, it is up to the students.” Every media outlet in the Morningside College Mass Communications department is student run. Though students get experience in the Morningside TV studio with classes like audio production and the audio production practicum, outside of these classes, students are almost never seen in the station.

When asking Andrew Nase, sophomore at Morningside College, what he thought about MCTV and if he would be willing to get involved, after several seconds of thought he responded, “I don’t know much about it. I’ve only heard about it in the Intro to Mass Comm class, but I don’t even know where it is at. And no, I don’t think I want to get involved.”

MCTV has not always been on life support. Professor Ross Fulgsang commented to me that when he first arrived at Morningside College, there was a weekly news cast run in the college studio.  Karen Johnson, a librarian at Morningside College, said, “It was easier to get students involved with MCTV becuase they were paid like a work study job.”

Nowadays, students are not paid to work in the TV station. They have to commit their own time with no compensation for a TV newscast to be possible.

Josh Meredith

Comm 208

Paper #1

The Hickman-Johnson-Furrow Learning Center, also known as the Morningside College Library, first opened in February 1914, as the Alumni Gymnasium. The architect William Beuttler designed the building for the Morningside College Campus. An increase in enrollment at Morningside College following World War II amplified the need for reference materials as well as study space for the students attending the college. So, in 1956, renovations were done to convert it to a library. In 2005 more renovations were done to make the learning center more inviting and supportive for the entire campus community.

So, I am standing here today observing this building full of Morningside College history. The outside of the building is made of layers and layers of brick. One can realize that the building has three stories in it by simply looking at the windows from the outside. The brick is brown/burnt red in color and even though it has been in the summer sun all day, it is still fairly cool to the touch. Not like a tub of ice cream but more like the feeling you get when you jump into a well temperature pool. Unlike the inviting water though, the brick is rough like the everyday sand paper you would find in a shop class. If you ran you fingers along in long enough, they would become raw quite quickly. The roof is covered in a red, rounded tile that looks smooth and slick from three stories below.

There are three entrances that are used to enter this building full of knowledge. Two are located in the back of the building. One is for the KMSC and MCTV students and the other is probably the most popular way to enter the library. In fact, it is the entrance I always use because it is the closest to the dorms and café. To add to the doors popularity among the student body, it has the main sidewalk that runs through the heart of the campus wind right up to it. The main entrance, located in the front of the building, has the original entrance to the building back when it was a gymnasium re-set off to the side of the structure. This old entrance is made of stone and is smooth to the touch like a baby’s butt. But unlike a baby, it is very old.

Around the building, the grass is green, and thick. Sidewalks run every which way like a maze around the building so that a student could easily get from the Learning Center to any building or parking lot on campus. Tan, extremely over weight squirrels that have the habit of not hibernating during the winter run around the grass and from tree to tree. These trees spot the open grass on the main entrance side in the same way that students spot the library an hour before closing time. I have been told that they are non-hibernating heavy set squirrels because the Morningside College biology department insists on feeding the confident rodents.

The learning center is a hot spot for almost every student on campus, but not just for hitting the books. Inside this building is classrooms, a radio station, a TV station, a circulation desk where and awesome guy named Josh Meredith works, and the Spoonholder Café. The Spoonholder is located near the front entrance and is always a temptation when walking by. This is because the smells of Starbucks coffee assaults one’s nose immediately, while the smell of muffins and cookies slowly wafer through the air as if you were back in grandmas kitchen. It is a quiet place there on the first floor. But then again, it is a library so you would expect that. Most of the first floor is lined with tables were students can sit to study. There is a back area full of reference materials that are as old as dirt and most students refuse to touch them because the internet has everything they could need for references. There is also a magazine section where almost any magazine that matters in the world today resides in the area in alphabetical order.

The library now.

The library back in the day.

Like most college students across America, Peter Swanke likes to participate in the drinking of adult beverages. This is where most the similarities stop though. Swanke is from Chadron, Nebraska. I have absolutely no idea where that is on the Nebraska state map but that is not the important part. The important part is that in Chadron, Peter picked up the habit of drinking at the age of 16. Yes, he was just a young rebel doing what most everyone else in Chadron was doing at his age. Now, Peter is 23 and is working on the six year college plan. He spent his first five years at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, where instead of going to his gen eds classes, he went to the bottles of scotch. Now scotch is his favorite drink. Peter’s dad got a job as a professor at Morningside College and so Peter followed him here to Sioux City, Iowa.

The first thing that stuck out to me when starting to interview Peter was how wonderfully, beautiful and awe inspiring his hand writing was. He is obviously a direct descendent of one of the best scribes in the history of ancient Rome. If Will Ferrill’s voice is like a mixture of Fergi and Jesus, than Peter’s handy work with the ink pen must be like a mixture of Pablo Picasso best painting, Beethoven’s best finger work while tickling the ivory, and Jesus. There is a saying that goes, “a picture says a thousand words.” Well, right now Swanke’s cursive handwriting is saying probably about 2000 plus to me. Maybe even 2500. Don’ believe me, check it our yourself in room 111 in the Morningside College Library from 1:45 PM to 3:30 PM every Tuesday and Thursday this fall semester.

Peter is not afraid to speak his mind, or swear while doing it. During our Comm 208 (Fundamentals of Journalism) class, it is frequent for him to let slip 5 words everyday that most mothers would deem quite unacceptable. If you need help on his favorite word, start rhyming with the word “duck”. If you can’t figure it out then, you are too young to be reading a blog anyways. If he had to pay a quarter to the Josh Meredith Foundation every time he let a naughty word slip out his mouth, I would be rich or at least definitely quitting my day job.

Behind the cover up of fancy hand writing, swearing, and drinking Peter Swanke has a passion and love for theater. This love came from a trip to Europe. He was in London when he decided to go to the theater and saw “Les Miserables.” From then on, he has been hooked. He is currently majoring in Theater and has the dream of working for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has already starred in many plays including “A Mid Summers Night Dream” and “Dylan”.

Best of luck Mr. Peter Swanke! I can’t wait to hear about you rocking the theater scene in Chicago and New York City.

Elwood Olsen Stadium, formally know as Roberts Stadium is home to Morningside’s football, soccer and track and fields teams. In 2005, more than $2,500,000 worth of renovations were completed giving the stadium the look it has today. In order to make in to the field you have to walk down the biggest hill on campus, through the stadium parking lot, and through the gates to get to where I am standing now.

The first observation I make is that it is hotter on the field than it is on normal grass. The field is a turf that fells squishy under my feet. When i reached down to feel it with my bare hand, the turf felt like it could give a great back scratch. When I pulled my hand back up, it was covered in these little black pieces of rubber. The field is green with maroon end zones and white lines every five yards for football and yellow lines to make an outline of a soccer field.

Surronding the field is a track the is 400 meters or a light maroon track that can make most men tired just looking at it. The stands, like everything else, are painted maroon and have shiny metal stands in them that are boiling hot in the summer heat. If one had an egg, I am sure it can be fried up on the stands. There are Morningside Mustang logos everywhere, including the very middle of the field.