frankly… Episode 86: Find Your Voice Before You Find Your Career

In this episode of frankly…

The transcript below is AI-generated and may contain minor inaccuracies. Tune in to the episode audio to hear the full conversation! 

Transcript

Dan

Hello and welcome to frankly. Today I am talking with Len O’Kelly, who is director of the school of communications with my alma mater, Grand Valley State University. And actually, we go back quite a ways. Len was our advisor on the student radio station, WCKS, The Whale, out at Grand Valley when I was just a DJ having fun on the station, which eventually, as we’ll talk about, kind of led to where I am. But this was a really fun interview. We got to reminisce a little bit, but also talk about, the importance of student radio and kind of just student programming in general for universities and college students in finding their way, but also talked about, what the School of Communications looks like today and how that curriculum has kind of evolved over these past 10 years or so since Len’s been in the role. and kind of changed with employer demands, with new technologies, all of these things that have changed in how the media works even. So I loved this conversation. I hope you do too. Len’s a great radio voice. He’s been on the air for 30 odd years. So with that, I’ll turn it over to him and enjoy. Hey Len, welcome to frankly. Thanks for coming on.

Len

Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

Dan

Yeah, it’s been some time since we’ve seen each other, but you know, I’m sure we’ve been talking a little bit already here, but a lot has changed in the last, call it, 14 years since I was in the School of Communications at Grand Valley. But

Len

There’s a lot of commonality, but there are some things that are very, very, the students have changed over the years, at least in the time I’ve been here.

Dan

Yeah, I believe that. So where I want to start here, though, is even before that. So take us back, kind of walk me through your career path, kind of you started off in a very different role. Also, what got you into broadcast and then talk about how you ended up kind of where you are today?

Len

I’ll go back to the very beginning. I started in college as a freshman as a pre-medical major. I grew up in a medical family. My stepfather was an anesthesiologist. My mother was a nurse who went into administration. So it was preordained when I left high school that I was going to be doing something in healthcare. And I had always had a passion for radio. I guess I have to go back even further than that. When I was in the 6th grade, I had a teacher, it was me and another guy. We were basically left to do independent study as 6th graders, which you should never trust 6th graders.

Dan

Yeah that’s a dangerous path.

Len

And the only way it was going to work was he had to work with the students who were the lowest performing readers in the class, and we were the highest performing readers. So what he came up with, Rick Johnston, my 6th grade teacher, who I kind of owe a lot of this to, He said, why don’t you guys do your homework on cassette tape so I can listen to it while I grade everybody else’s stuff. We, this guy Dave and I, turned it into a radio station that broadcast homework assignments. It was totally made up and fictional. And then we just had fun with it. And then we got together on weekends. We’d start playing the fictional radio station with his dad had an old tape recorder and some equipment we were left to play with. And then I would be by myself at home figuring out, hey, I can play my parents’ records and introduce them like I’m a disc jockey.

Dan

Yeah.

Len

And it was fun and I loved it. And I didn’t do a single thing with it until I got to college. And then it was like that first weekend in college, I was like, wait a minute, there’s a radio station here. I’m going to get in and do a radio show because I remember having fun doing that. You know, this would be so college is what, 13th grade. So here it is 7 years later or whatever it is. I’m like, yeah, I’m going to try this and see what happens. I immediately fell in love with it. I got on the air once and then I had to sit my parents down and say, I am going to change my major and I am going to do something ridiculous. And they were not pleased.

Dan

Yeah. I can imagine.

Len

So I had a semester on the radio. After a semester, I became the program director of the radio station. After my second semester, I became the permanent morning host on the radio station on every day for two hours a day. By the end of my third semester, I had a job working part-time in Joliet, Illinois, near where my campus was. And by my 4th semester, I dropped out of college.

Dan

Wow.

Len

And I started a career that took me back and forth, primarily Chicago, West Michigan, a number of times. One brief stop in New Zealand where I programmed a radio station. So I got a full experience packed into about 25 years. Well, then you get to a point when midlife hits. And you say, what am I really working up to here? What’s going to be the end game? I also saw some of my older radio friends being made redundant, as we say, and not having any career prospects. I thought I better do something about this. So at one point I went and finished my degree at the age of 35. I went back and got my bachelor’s degree. And then I thought, well, what am I going to do after radio? And I was always obsessed with the idea that I would give back some way and do student radio. And that’s how I got to become the advisor of Grand Valley State’s student radio station, The Whale. It was 2010, and they were going to shut the radio station off because the advisor had quit and they had nobody to run it. And I had found out that they were going to turn the radio station off and just empty the space. And I said, I can’t let that happen. I introduced myself to a man named Bob Stoll, who was in charge of student life at the time. And I said, you don’t know me, but I hear you’re going to turn off a radio station. I can’t let you do that.

Dan

Yeah.

Len

And he said, send me your resume and we can have a conversation. I think it was about 20 minutes later, he said, you’re hired. Because I’m like, no, I didn’t make a decision there. I actually know how to do radio. I can do this thing. And then I developed a class here at Grand Valley where students would learn how to do radio properly. So then that led to go get your master’s degree, go get your PhD. And then eventually the next thing I know, my after radio plan is you’re going to be a college professor. And I have been at Grand Valley ever since. It’s now coming up on 16 years later. And I have picked up some additional, you do management and radio, you end up doing management and higher ed. So now I’m the director of the School of Communications, where I’m responsible for the faculty and the student media now as part of us and our speech lab. And there’s all the different academic programs and all of that runs through my office now. So That’s the short, what a strange trip it’s been version, I guess, of all of that. But yeah, that’s what I do now.

Dan

Yeah, it’s always a winding path. I feel like whenever we ask this question, there’s never a, there’s never a straight A to B for, you know, where you start to where you are, but.

Len

Oh, I think I’m on cue. I mean, it’s, there’s a lot of letters had to happen in between there.

Dan

so talk a little bit about the School of Comms, though. So, I mean, I know adding PR is involved in that in broadcasting. That’s where I came out of that.

Len

Adding PR is a big part of that. It’s our biggest major, right? We just renamed Communication Studies to Communication and Media Studies to be more reflective of what it is. Broadcasting has taken some changes over the years. We actually had gotten rid of the broadcast major entirely a couple of years ago, only to realize that was a mistake and we’ve now brought it back. It’s a combined program called Journalism, Broadcasting and Digital Media.

Dan

Okay.

Len

Again, reflecting which way the industry is going. And then Health Communication is our other undergraduate minor. We used to have a film program. We used to have photography. We used to have theater. Those have moved off into other areas where they’re a little better aligned with other academic programs. And then we have a master’s program. There’s a Master of Science in Communication that we offer in the school as well. So all told, Between all majors, all minors, everything, certificate programs. We serve about 1000 students here at Grand Valley.

Dan

Okay, all right. Wow, that’s a big population though. It’s a good chunk of it.

Len

It is. And I feel like half of them were in my office today asking me questions. And that’s great.

Dan

That is good. Open door.

Len

It’s one of the things I wanted to make sure happened was I didn’t lose touch with what the students were doing. So I still teach. I teach my radio course, but I’m an administrator more than I am an instructor anymore.

Dan

Okay, gotcha. So you You kind of touched on this a little bit already in the digital communications piece of it, but talk a little bit about what, or just how the curriculum has changed in the world of communications over these last decade or so. What have you really seen that’s been kind of the main drivers there?

Len

I’ll start with what we call our JBM major for short, journalism, broadcast, and digital media. That used to be separate programs. You used to be either a journalism major or you were a broadcasting major. And we realized about 10 years ago that doesn’t make sense anymore. If you’re working for a newspaper, there’s probably a podcast attached to that. If you are working for a radio station, in fact, one of the broadcasters here in Grand Rapids insists that the air talent do X number of blog posts per week because they want to drive web traffic. So you have to be a writer. Television, let’s be honest, who’s waiting till 11 o’clock to watch the news anymore? It’s all happening on our phones. And then that doesn’t even account for content creation, podcasts, all of those things that didn’t exist in the form we know them 10 years ago. So we’ve had to revise, evolve, reinvent. We’re constantly adding new things. We’re launching a class just in podcasting coming up in the fall that we’re very excited about. That was born out of necessity. We were hearing through the grapevine that even if you’re an English major now, you may have a class where a professor says, don’t write me a paper, just give me a podcast.

Dan

Really? And students were like,

Len

in other majors, like biology students are being told, yeah, give me a podcast on that. And those students are like, we don’t know how to do that.

Dan

Yeah.

Len

So we’ve launched a class to say, we don’t care what major you are. You want to learn how to do a podcast and we’ll show you how.

Dan

Yeah.

Len

So we’ve got podcast studios constantly in use here. You know, there’s two radio stations students can be a part of. There’s a lot of ways for students to, as we say, find their voice. But that’s the evolution just in the time I’ve been here, what we’ve had to do with curriculum to match what’s happening out there. We don’t want to prepare students for a job that existed 20 years ago.

Dan

Yeah. Yeah, and I’ll speak to, I mean, even the podcast thing, I mean, me today, I’m a good example of this. A lot of companies have their own podcasts and that’s a valuable skill no matter what industry that you’re in, you can, you know, pick up a mic and host and have some thought leadership for your organization and, you know, use that as a marketing tool or as an expertise tool, whatever it might look like for them. But it seems like pretty,

Len

And we want to help students do it the right way. I mean, I’ve joked in my radio class for years that it’s ironic that I’m on a podcast now because I’m generally not a fan of them. And I say that with a very particular reason, and that is I come from the version of radio where everybody had to audition to have an opportunity to be heard. which, you give the consider the democratization of what podcasting is now. It’s the exact opposite of that, which I think is actually fantastic. That part I like. The problem is so many students I encounter think that a podcast is a brain dump.

Dan

Yeah.

Len

I’m just going to hit record and I’m going to give you 25 minutes of my innermost thoughts. And I’m like, nobody wants to hear that. Let’s structure it like a radio show. Let’s do it the right way.

Dan

Yeah, and there are a ton, there’s a million of them out there that are that. And I think maybe like the parallel that I draw there to some of the other traditional media versus, you know, modern sources of news. Like if you look at newspaper or digital media sources versus Facebook and social media, I mean, how many people get their news from social posts today, where anybody can write and post and get that out to the world, versus even what, 10, 15 years ago that was… Sure. Like

Len

I tell my students in my class every semester, if you’ve got one of these things in your hand, you’re now a reporter, because you can go live from wherever, you know, wherever you are. You can, I’m up, here’s my camera’s running, I’m streaming, I am now a broadcaster from anywhere in the world. And it’s the TV channel. Yeah, exactly. I’ve seen that. I’ve been watching the news and we’re like, we have footage from somebody like, oh, that’s just some guy with a phone.

Dan

Right, yeah, blurry picture up there. That’s funny. Talk about maybe the other side of that also. You mentioned that there was a station that had requested like a certain set of skills. Do you see that a lot in employers coming to you to say, we need this skill set coming out of the school of comms and our interns, or we’re looking for people with this specific skill set that’s maybe different than what it was before?

Len

Just the ability to communicate. I’ll give you an example that’s very real here on our campus. The School of Computing, College of Computing broke off. It’s its own college now. Computer science majors have to take public speaking in order to be admitted into the computer program. And what they realized was they were attracting computer geniuses who couldn’t look somebody in the eye and explain what the problem was. Like the number one skill they needed was, can you explain this to somebody in a way that makes sense? The number one skill I am asked for when I get out in the community and talk to employers is, can we build communication skills? And generationally, this has become a challenge. So I teach the introduction to radio course, which requires students do a radio show every week. Some of them are mortified by the possibility of doing a radio show quite literally to no one, right? There’s not a big audience to our little campus radio station that we have. We created one specifically for the course. It’s an even smaller audience, right? It’s only just for this. But I have been in the habit the last couple of years of asking a question on the final in that course, and I’ll do it again this semester. What is your biggest takeaway from this course? And I will never forget the student who said, I feel like after taking this course, I could pick up a phone and order a pizza.

Dan

Yeah.

Len

And I, it’s a funny answer, but at the same time, that is a very real thing to consider. that a younger generation is that uncomfortable picking up a phone and talking to a stranger that they don’t feel that they have the confidence to do it.

Dan

Yep. Every appointment, every order is scheduled through a phone or through an app or a site. It’s just, there’s not a demand. You don’t have to do it in your life. So it’s.

Len

No. But if you’re going to be a reporter or you’re going to be a journalist or you’re going to interview for a job, if you’re going to ask for a loan, These are situations where you have to look somebody in the eye and state your case. And I am realizing now that there is a premium placed on the ability to do that and do it well. And that’s what we’re trying to get all of our students in a position to do.

Dan

Yeah, I believe that. And that’s great. I mean, that’s a great, great kind of secondary aspect to that class, or, you know, maybe a primary for some people, like you’re saying. That’s a huge benefit just to have that practice.

Len

And I’m very honest with him. I say very few of you will go into radio as a career. I think back to my time in college radio. There were 65 people on my radio station. I think four of us made it to the pros. I mean, it’s a very small number, but everybody comes away from that experience with something they can apply, something they can use. And I see there’s a value in that.

Dan

Yeah, and you know, that’s a great point. And it’s something else I want to talk about is just what the value of student radio looks like or why you thought it was so important to save that. station, back in 2010, which I could give you my own answer, and I will if you want, because I’m a good example of this, I think. But I want to hear your take on it also of, what, at your core, why were you so passionate about keeping the whale alive and student radio in general?

Len

Well, a little bit of it was selfish. I mean, I realized that without my student radio station, none of my experience would have happened. I mean, I got, I was able to play, I always, used to joke, I was sort of the Forrest Gump of radio. I was a kid who grew up in the Chicago suburbs with no, like, how do I end up sitting at one point interviewing the Prime Minister of New Zealand talking about hockey? Like, how do I end up in, how does that become a thing? You know, how do I end up talking to rock stars, politicians, movers, shakers, being at the table on an election night, looking a losing candidate in the eye and saying, what went wrong? How did I get to do? I can trace it all back to that decision to walk into a college radio station and say, I’m going to give this a try. And I looked at it very selfishly as I want students to have the same opportunity. Where I landed later, and I advised the whale for 15 years, was, I want students to have the opportunity to express themselves in a way that is not dependent on a grade. There’s no, if you’ve got something to say, it. You’re in a protected space. Something that makes me uncomfortable in the national discourse is, I always hear this, you know, Universities have these safe spaces. I have a note in every syllabus for every course I teach that says, yes, this class is a safe space. It is a safe space for you to express your opinion. Your grade is not dependent on whether or not I agree with you. And student media, radio, television, newspaper, all of its forms, are vital for that. That’s for students. This is, I tell them, this is the last chance you’re going to have before you go out in the big bad world, earn a paycheck, where your employer is going to have some thoughts on how it is you express yourself. Here, we’re your employer and we’re saying, do this.

Dan

Do your thing, yeah.

Len

Lose the opportunity to take the space. So for me, it was important to protect the right for students to be creative in ways that maybe they never thought possible. I still think that.

Dan

I agree. I think that’s, I think that’s a huge benefit for a university to have, not just the radio, but the newspaper or the TV station, all of these things where you can also just explore what’s out there and try to like get some experience in different ways. And I think that would, that’s my answer for the same question is, I did not end up in radio. I’m that, other 56 out of your 60 in your experience. I’m part of that group. But, I was an environmental science major going in to my, after my sophomore year. And I was part of the 2010 radio station when you came in, just a DJ hanging around. I wanted to get a little bit more involved. I ended up in the promotions director role. And I thought, I can do this. I like this as a job. got to do social channels, build a website, like all these different things for the whale that eventually turned into a promotions internship with Clear Channel Radio, which eventually turned into the internship of the company that I’m still with today, almost 15 years later. So it’s, you know, I can draw a direct line from, you know, the very, very beginning of my career to where I am today. And that started with just by chance hopping into a open slot to DJ a radio show that no one listened to.

Len

But see, Dan, you also touched on something very important there, and that is the socialization piece, because COVID damn near killed student radio and not for the reason that everybody had to go home and isolate. It’s that after we all came back, people were so used to being isolated, we couldn’t get people to come to the radio station anymore. We couldn’t get students to leave their dorm rooms at all. Student clubs in general just couldn’t get people to come to meetings and be part of things because we had basically crafted a generation of students and told them it’s okay to stay home and be by yourself. We’ve had to go to great lengths as educators, as advisors, as mentors to draw students out to be part of things anymore. And I think we’re still feeling some of the societal damage from the pandemic. Six years later, we’re still dealing with some of its after-effects.

Dan

Yeah, oh, I believe that. And I’m sure like Campus Life Night and those things where you’re trying to recruit people to all these different organizations, I’m sure that’s just one step more difficult now. But, you know, I still keep up with the whale on Instagram and various things like that. And every once in a while, I’ll see a post coming across. I see some cool stuff that they’re doing, though. Like they did the their version of Tiny Desk concerts. I can’t think of what it’s called, but.

Len

No, just this past weekend, yeah. They called it, what did they call it? Yeah, but it was basically Tiny Desk. They took the NPR idea, brought a band in, and this was all the students like, we want to try this.

Dan

I love that.

Len

Great, go nuts. Get out of your rooms and go see live music, right?

Dan

Yeah, get out. Plus, for the people planning it too, it seems like a fun thing in the moment that you’re doing. And maybe it seems like work, but probably doesn’t. And it’s just such good experience down the road though, too, to say, you put this together, you built this, you came up with the idea. It’s like, Just teaching people to think creatively, I think is, you talk about teaching people to communicate being an important piece of it. I think also just that critical creative thinking is something that comes out in these types of programs that you don’t always get in the classroom.

Len

You hit it on the head, the ability to think critically, to question information you are given. You know, I just did a session last week with some students who are peer mentors in some of the services we have on campus. And I did a session with them on news and fake news. And we talked about the whole idea of, anytime you see a story, you have to ask yourself who benefits. And they sort of looked at me funny. I said, someone always benefits. Who’s behind the story? Ask that question. Challenge. Don’t be afraid to say, is this really, I mean, don’t assume everything is false because somebody says it to you, right? That’s the other extreme. But ask questions. Who wants me to know this and why is a very healthy question to ask about anything you hear.

Dan

Oh yeah, that’s for sure. And I mean, that’s a lot of what we do is like pitching media stories to, you know, hopefully get clients into the news. There is always somebody, you know, reaching out to say, hey, you should think about covering this. Which, you know, I think is a natural balance and, you know, symbiotic relationship in a way with reporters and PR and our folks. But yeah, that’s a great point is. gives you that questioning, gives you that mindset to think about it.

Len

And that’s one of the things, if our students come away with the ability to express themselves and they’re willing to ask questions, then I think we’ve done a good job in preparing them for an as of yet uninvented career.

Dan

Yeah, yep.

Len

You know, it’s something that we don’t know what… I was just talking to somebody about that today. You get that question in an interview, where do you see yourself in 10 years? I don’t know, because we don’t know what 10 years is gonna look like. We don’t know what’s gonna be, what’s the new thing that’s gonna exist that we didn’t even dream up yet.

Dan

Right, yeah, were there AI developers 10 years ago thinking that’s where I’m gonna end up, where, you know, I don’t know.

Len

But we will be preparing students who are ready for whatever that thing is, and I feel good about that.

Dan

Yeah, I mean, that’s that I think is what I came out of college most thankfully. for was the ability to think critically. And that’s like the most important, I think, thing that you can learn in life is just being able to take a problem, think your way around it, think more strategically. I think that’s just a, that’s the value to me. I love it.

Len

Yeah, no matter the career you go into, those are skills that are transferable.

Dan

Yeah. So maybe this is a question on the same lines, but one that we like to close on kind of just more for fun. But think about yourself at 21 coming out, not coming out of college, but dropping out of college, or somebody graduating today, if you want to think about it that way. What’s something, a piece of advice that you give to students or would give yourself around that time?

Len

Oh, what a great question. If I think, and this is advice I have given, it’s basically one of the things I always tell students is make the most of everything available to you now. First of all, you paid for it. College is not cheap. I tell my students the first day of class every semester, tuition’s running about $2 a minute. So, if you do the math on it, that’s a lot of money.

Dan

I believe it.

Len

Never got the most out of your experience. You have made all these things are here available for you to find out, take advantage. It’s one thing I wish I would have done more of when I was a student. I had my tight little group I was very comfortable with and I did, I wasn’t always, you know, they call it a comfort zone for a reason. It’s not until you get out of that zone that you really find out what you’re capable of. And I’m always encouraging students to do that. One of the pieces of advice I’ll often give advisees or students is one of the best things you can learn in college is what you don’t want to do. We spend an awful lot of time preparing you for what you want to do, but until you try it, you don’t know necessarily that you don’t want to do it. I’ll use my radio class as an example. I have a lot of students, it’s a required class now in our major. Everybody has to take radio. Many of them on the first day say, why am I doing this? I know I don’t want to do it. And I say, well, let’s check back again in 14 weeks.

Dan

Yeah.

Len

And it’s funny how many, some of them are like, you know, This wasn’t something I knew I could do, but I’m open to the idea. There’s others who will say, you know what? I’ve done it. Never again. I said, great. Now we can rule something out. But you’ve tried it. You now understand. You know now how it works. I’ve had other students convinced I’m going to do radio. Then they find out what it really involves. And they’re like, oh, maybe this isn’t for me. Great. I’d rather have you figure that out at 19 than at 40.

Dan

Yes. Yeah, Trying to start over, your whole life at that point is a whole different story.

Len

I’ve done it.

Dan

It’s not easy to do.

Len

So yeah, I think if I went back in time and were able to sit down with my younger self, I’d be like, you’re not taking advantage of all the things that are provided here for you. Why not?

Dan

Yeah, and there’s so much. I mean, it’s hard to gauge what all is even available to you, unless you’re very intentional about going out to try and track it all down and make the most of it. But that’s a great point, because I I think I would say the same to myself, that I’d, outside of radio and some other, some other programs.

Len

The other piece of advice I give students is keep in touch with people when you don’t need things. Yeah, we always feel like, oh, I’m in trouble, I need help with this, or I need a couch moved, or I need to find a job, or I need it. If you’re the person who only… picks up the phone when you need something, eventually people will stop picking up the phone.

Dan

Yep, that is great.

Len

Sometimes one of my best friends in the broadcast business was a guy who would call every week. He’d call me and everybody else on his list just to see how we were doing. And he was a longtime radio guy in the north northwest suburbs of Chicago. When the day he ended up out of a job, we were all like, what are we going to do to help Nick? We owe this guy.

Dan

The quickest tire in the city.

Len

Oh, no question. We were all bending over backwards for this guy because He had never asked us for a single thing in his life. And now it’s like, okay, now we want to help you.

Dan

Yeah, that’s a, I mean, going back to what you said about communication, that’s a, not a lost, but it’s an art that’s not as common as it once was, I think. It’s just keeping in touch with people and, you know, maintaining those relationships.

Len

Yeah, it’s very valuable.

Dan

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate you taking the time and it was great catching up with you.

Len

Same. I appreciate the conversation. It’s always good to talk about. not only what we do well, but I’m glad to, I love when I can see a former student doing well too. That’s very encouraging for me. So thank you.

Dan

Good, yep. All right, well, we’ll have to catch up soon and we’ll talk to you then.

Len

Yeah, let me know if you’re coming back to campus. I’ll give you the nickel tour.

Dan

All right, love it. Thanks A lot. Thank you again to Len. Again, really appreciate taking the time for coming on here and talking with me today. And thank you for listening. If you are in a university setting or a college setting today where you have a radio or broadcast or media club available to you, it’s always my recommendation is go to check it out. At least give it a shot because you might find something you like. But with that, Thanks again for listening, and we will see you next time.