WIN Foundation Members Show Students the Power of Modern Radio

While WUSO currently lies silent, student radio at Wittenberg is about to be recharged.

This week, the WIN Foundation is sponsoring an introduction to radio for Wittenberg students at WYSO, Dayton's regional public radio station located in Yellow Springs. This exciting opportunity was made possible by WIN Foundation member, Luke Dennis, class of 2000. Luke is the General Manager and President of WYSO.

Luke Dennis, WYSO

On April 9th, students from the departments of English, Communications, and Digital Media will be joined by students with interests in Athletics Communications and Journalism for a station tour and presentations at WYSO on digital radio.

There will be food and refreshments, and the goal is to ignite the curiosity of these students - helping them to see what can be done in the reboot of WUSO at Wittenberg. The evening will include a deep dive into digital media by WYSO's music director who will deliver a presentation on WYSO's new digital media platform. Luke and his staff will also answer questions about running a radio station and careers in media.

Luke is part of a group of WIN members who benefited from working at WUSO during their time at Wittenberg, and the Foundation has organized these alumni to provide mentoring to students of the rebooted WUSO. While some of these members are obviously not as familiar with the newest internet radio technologies as Luke and his staff, these former WUSO GM's have plenty of experience in what it took to develop music, news, and sports programming at the station - as well as managing a group of students with extremely varied musical tastes. They are also poised to help students to understand career opportunities in media, as well as to explain how working at WUSO helped them pursue a range of non-media career options.

This week's program at WYSO, and the WIN Foundation's initiative to help support the rebooting of WUSO, is part of a broader WIN Project that we are calling Activity-based Enrollment (ABE). You can read more about that project at this link: https://www.wittinnovationnetwork.org/post/an-activity-based-college-recruiting-plan-to-boost-enrollment . The goal of the ABE Project is to organize and fund efforts to help Wittenberg's Admissions department attract and retain students using co-curriculars. This would work the same way that the Athletic Department recruits students, but instead of recruiting for sports teams, imagine recruiting for students for non-athletic co-curriculars (Student Government, Model UN, Mock Trial, Union Board, etc.). This is a technique that has been proven at other small liberal colleges with good effect, and we are working with Wittenberg's interim VP of Enrollment to integrate this concept into Wittenberg's admissions strategy.

The WIN Foundation has worked closely with faculty and staff members at Wittenberg in the development of this opportunity - including Professors Sheryl Cunningham, Cynthia Richards, and D'Arcy Fallon, as well as Associate Director of Athletics Ryan Maurer. We thank them for their support of this program, as well as their continued enthusiasm for excellence at Wittenberg. We also appreciate the on-going support of Wittenberg's administration, particularly Provost Brian Yontz for continuing to place an emphasis on experiential learning opportunities.