Wayne State College has suspended face-to-face classes and moved to a remote delivery model for the remainder of the semester. Many other schools have done the same thing across the country

This week, we talk about curriculum development using learning technology.  The podcast has advice for faculty and also helps students understand the challenges their teachers face right now.

This week we bring you what you might call a podcast within a podcast – a podcast created for the Sound Design course student Shelby Hagerdon.  Shelby is majoring in History at Wayne State with minors in Geospatial Technology, Political Science, and Digital Film Production.  The Sound design course is part of that third minor and addresses the wide range of audio production needed in today’s media environment, including for conventional radio, sound for film production, and podcasting.

For one of her assignments, Shelby created three episodes of a podcast she calls Gilded Cast…discussing and re-enacting historical events and situations from the Guilded Age.  In this pilot episode we’ll hear a recreated dialog of rival inventors Thomas Edison and Nikoli Tesla. 

This week we talk with the director of the Wayne State Theatre, Professor Rusty Ruth, as well as theatre student Claire Barnes about the recent Kennedy Center competition theatre students participated in, as well as plans for the major production of “Pirates of Penzance” later this spring.

Our guest this week is Professor of Physics and Astronomy Todd Young, who is also director of the Fred G. Dale Planetarium at Wayne State.

We talk about the active program of shows and activities at the planetarium, which is located on the lower floor of the Wayne State Carhart Science Building, including public shows and private group bookings.  The planetarium is adding a laser show system and virtual reality.

More information on the planetarium is at:  https://www.wsc.edu/planetarium/

This Week on “Postcards from Wayne State” a press conference about the “Northeast Nebraska Growing Together” initiative… a major new four-year scholarship and cooperative education program at Wayne State…created in cooperation with the Aksarben Foundation and the Norfolk business community.

The President of the Aksarben Foundation Sandra Reding and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts were present for the announcement, both of whom you’ll hear.

One note – we weren’t able to be there in person to record the event with our own equipment, so we are borrowing the audio from other media that covered the event, with permission.  About half-way through the event, the audio starts picking up distortion, which we aren’t able to filter out.  We apologize for this, but we think the “Northeast Nebraska Growing Together” initiative is important enough to present the full audio.

Our topic this week is the Wayne State Honors Program, with Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities Yasuko Taoka who is also director of the Honors Program. We also talk with four students who are in the Honors Program this semester about their honors projects - Adam Smith, Shelby Hagerdon, Sarah Lorenzen, and Jordan Fashing.

We talk with Vaughn Benson, dean of the Wayne State School of Business and Technology. Dr. Benson is the longest-serving dean at WSC, and has recently announced that he is stepping down as dean and returning to the classroom. We talk about his decision, and about how both the School of Business and Technology, and the college as a whole, have changed since he first began teaching in 1974.

WSC Head Football Coach Dan McLaughlin announced his retirement at the end of the last semester.  We present an encore of his appearance the next day on "Cat Talk," the sports talk show in KWSC-FM 91.9 the Cat…with hosts Austin Svehla and Blake Hilkemeier. The coach talks about his fifteen years as head football coach, his reasons for retiring now, and the most recent WSC Football season.

Our guest this week is the chancellor of the Nebraska State College system, Paul Turman. Dr. Turman is nearing the end of his first year as chancellor and was on the Wayne State campus recently for a college system board meeting.  

We talk with him about the role of his office, his own background, and about the major strategic planning process that has been in development over the last several months.

Our planned guest for this week had to cancel due to unforeseen circumstances, so this week our topic is our podcast, itself.  We'll talk about why we're doing it, how it's going, and what's coming up in the future.