by Scott Peet

Hawk Radio is seeing a lot of exciting changes this year. Entering its ninth school year under the guidance of Dr. Don Vincent there is a renewed energy amongst the staff. A new and improved studio has brought interest back to the station and a cast of fresh voices will be taking to the air.

The Scribe sat down to talk with Vincent about the changes and what he hopes to see happen this year.

The Scribe: What’s new for Hawk Radio this year?

 Doctor Vincent: We have a new feature that we are going to start. We’re going to call it faculty favorites.  We’re going to highlight a favorite song from a faculty member on Fridays where we will air the song four times at 9AM, noon, 3PM and 6PM. And we’re going to pre-record a segment with the faculty member where they explain the significance of the song. I thought it would be a fun way to get the faculty engaged in  (Hawk Radio) and maybe students would be interested in what songs faculty like. I will probably extend it to also staff and administration.

TS: What are the benefits of the new location?

 DV: Our new location is going to be in Franciscan Hall which is part of this new movement for the college to get more students engaged in that building. We’re going to be housed in the same area of student activities and also there’s the new video arcade. We feel like this new location will put us at the center of student action. I think that’s exciting. Though I like where we are now, we’re kind of closed off from the campus and it’s something that seems exclusive to communication students and we really don’t want it to be that. It’s something that belongs to the whole campus, so I think that this new location puts us at the center of campus in our coolest building.

TS: Who is invited to join?

 DV: Everybody. Absolutely everybody. We get a lot of interest from comm students, but anybody that has any interest in talking, or if you have a musical taste that you want to share with people, we would love to have you. There are really no restrictions on what people can do on the air, as long as it’s relatively appropriate. It’s an opportunity for students to express themselves and express their creativity, so anybody that wants to do their own show, they can certainly do that. Or if they just want to be involved in the marketing of the station, we definitely need people that are interested in helping us make the station more prevalent. We want to get people listening to it, so if people can come up with ideas for contests or events we can do that will get people engaged that would be great, or if people just want to do some behind the scenes production work too. Even beyond students, faculty and staff, they can all get involved.

TS: What does the station need to improve quality and outreach?

 DV: We really need more people.  More students involved. Right now we’ve got three or four students that are really actively involved and engaged, and I think we could use a handful more of those. As the faculty advisor, I would love to be able to step away from it a little bit more and make it more of a student run station than it currently is. I think we need more voices, more people and more ideas.

 TS: What type of content would you like to have on the air?

 DV: One thing I would really like to do is have some sort of news, maybe like a magazine show. It’s probably not practical to do like a daily news show, although I suppose that’s possible if we had journalism students or maybe even political science students that would be interested in doing a daily update that would be great. Maybe some sort of audio version of The Scribe, I think would be neat, so that the articles that students are writing for journalism classes, turning those into audio pieces. I would like to perhaps broadcast some live sporting events. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve done some men’s basketball games. I would like to do some men’s and women’s basketball, some of the outdoor events, soccer, baseball softball, stuff like that.

TS: Do you have a favorite Hawk Radio show from over the years?

 DV: One I liked a lot was a show that was done by a student named Garrett Derkovitz which was called Old But Gold. It highlighted music from the 1950’s and it seems like a genre that college students might not be interested in. I think he presented it in a really cool way and it was a tight show. He delivered the information about the song quickly, and immediately got back into the song. It was a really well produced show.

 For those who would like to listen in on all of the shows this year, an official schedule of hosts and times is soon to come. Stay tuned for more event information as they will be hosting several throughout the year including a twenty-four hour broadcast on College Radio Day beginning Thursday, October 3^rd at 3 p.m. This event will serve as a house warming party for the new studio with entertainment, games and prizes throughout the night. Hawk Radio programming is available to be heard around the clock on your computer or phone, and they encourage you to visit the URL hawkradio.hilbert.edu. Just click on the link to open it in your browser and help support the station as it continues to grow.