Candidate Statements: Student Board Member

Below are statements from the two candidates for 2017 Student Board Member: Sam Bulkey from KCSU at Colorado State University and Tara Howell from WLOY at Loyola University Maryland.

Candidate statement: Sam Bulkey

I believe that I should be selected for the CBI Student Board member position because of my wide range of experience at KCSU in Fort Collins. I started out in Fall of 2014 as a DJ and quickly fell in love with the radio world. The next year I became the Web Editor and managed the station’s website, both content and technical issues. This year I was lucky enough to serve as the Station Manager for our station. We were able to start a video team, increase our listenership and social media output, and also reestablish structure into the station. Next year, I decided to focus my attention into the video team as the Video Manager and will be growing our video department within the radio station.

I would love to serve on the CBI Board to make this year’s CBI convention more helpful and useful for all radio members that will be attending. When I attended CBI this last year, a lot of the panels seemed built towards stations that were already ahead of the game. There were many students from smaller, less developed stations that had questions about getting programs started to become bigger and more well known. Most of the students leading panels didn’t have answers because their station was already well past the point of building up the station. While KCSU has been around for over 50 years, our program suffered after we had to move locations and missed out on many opportunities for growth. I believe with my knowledge of running a larger radio station along with having to rebuild our image and structure, I would be able to serve other radio stations with different missions and opportunities.

Thank you for considering me for this position. Please let me know if you need any other information from me.

Candidate statement: Tara Howell

My name is Tara Howell and I am a junior at Loyola University Maryland. Along with being a Communications major specializing in Public Relations and Digital Media, I am the General Manager at WLOY Loyola Radio. I spent this past year being a station manager and will spend the next year doing the same.

My love for college radio started when I was hired at WLOY as a first semester freshman to be a music librarian. Stacking CDs is unglamorous work, but I was very happy to do it so I could become involved with the station. Since that first day where I learned about Modern Baseball, my love for music and college radio exponentially increased, and hasn’t slowed down since. Shortly after that, I started a radio show that I continue to this day. After time as a music librarian, I spent time as the Program Director, and learned more about programming and the industry than I ever thought I would. Almost 3 years after I was hired, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. WLOY, and college radio in general, is my home.

I decided to take the opportunity to run for the CBI Student Board Position after seeing how incredible NSEMC is. Having attended twice, I cannot even put into words how incredible those few days were for me. I want to become involved in the organization that is one of the main links between all of the college radio stations and media publication groups we know and love. If given the opportunity to serve as this position, I look forward to representing all of the incredibly talented students that make up media groups on their respected campuses. College radio is an invaluable experience for me, and I feel that the opportunity to serve on the CBI Board would be as well.

Thank you for your time, and best of luck to all of the incredible candidates!