Recent graduates Steve Thorpe and Katie Yeager (both B.A. '07, communication) traveled from Seattle to Los Angeles this summer to interview a number of WSU alumni and industry professionals as part of the project "With a Degree from the Murrow School You Can Go Anywhere!"
Katie Yeager and Steve Thorpe with Kathi Goertzen (center) on the KOMO news set.
Their 10-day road trip, which began July 13, was funded
by the Dean's Excellence Fund and documented through a
"live-blog" at murrow-blog.com.
"Our Excellence Fund is designed to support opportunities, like this one, that come up after the budgets are set," said Erich Lear, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. "We offered support from our Excellence Fund because this project connects current communication students with successful alumni and reinforces our desire to promote the meaning of the Murrow legacy."
Thorpe and Yeager produced a video podcast, available at the iTunes Music Store, Podcast Alley, PodPlanet, Technorati, and their own Web site. The podcast contains a mini-documentary of their trip, as well as clips from all of their interviews.
Visit the blog to watch interviews of such communication professionals as Kathi Goertzen of KOMO–TV, Seattle; Jeff Payne, vice president of international programming for E! Entertainment; Scott Kreamer, an animation writer on the Nickelodeon show "El Tigre"; Ian Kennedy, chief technology officer for Mighty Dots, a live event screen producer; and many more. The blog also includes a number of interviews completed over the students' winter break.
"It's worth mentioning that I am constantly suprised about how young these alumni tend to be," said Yeager in one of her blog entries. "What's even more interesting is that they are successful and usually at the cutting edge of the entertainment industry."
"We expect this project will help connect prospective students, current students, and alumni from the Murrow school," said Lear. "That is how we sustain Murrow's legacy, by maintaining that connection. We want our students to see themselves as Cougars for life."
The Chronicle, College of Liberal Arts, Washington State University