Sam Segal (left in photo, with Larissa Anderson) began working as a DJ at the University of Minnesota's music station, Radio K, when he was just 15, through a weekly program produced by high school students. When he started taking classes at the U in his senior year of high school, he received further training and earned his own DJ shift. As a University junior now majoring in English, he's been DJ-ing for five years and has his own specialty jazz show, Sound Grammar, on Sunday nights. Until this fall, his Radio K and English experiences seemed unrelated, facets of a diverse range of interests that also include stand-up comedy and guitar. And then he saw the bold subject line in his email: "Intern with radio show WITS and earn English credits!"
In the summer of 2012, in St. Paul, alumna Larissa Anderson (BA 1999) took on her dream job full-time. In 2010, the MPR producer and leader of American Public Radio's Poetry Radio Project had launched APM's Marketplace Tech Report with host John Moe. The same year, the producer and host collaborated on a little side project in their spare time: four music and comedy shows taped at the Fitzgerald Theater, which they labeled Wits. Both programs caught on quickly. Juiced by its popularity, the nationally syndicated Wits kept expanding, adding a fall season in 2012 to the spring series, and in 2013 nearly doubling the number of Fitzgerald shows to 22 and going on the road. After just two years, Anderson and Moe were able to pass the reins on Marketplace Tech and immerse themselves in Wits. It was a moment the younger Anderson, in her first life-changing internship for APM, could not have imagined.
And so she opened a door, as a door had been opened for her.
"As our season started out this fall," Anderson describes, "we realized that we have significant production tasks that could be performed by interns, and that seemed particularly well-suited for English majors: researching our guests, writing copy for our videos, developing content for our newsletter, and more. As a U of MN English alumna, I turned to the English department to see if we could make something work."
The Department of English had been collaborating on exclusive year-long internships with the University of Minnesota Press since 2007, with impressive results: 70 percent of the interns who completed the internship are employed in publishing, three at the University of Minnesota Press. The undergraduate interns work 10 hours a week at the Press and earn University credits through a directed study in English. Undergraduate Studies Director Dan Philippon and Coordinator of Advising and Undergraduate Studies Rachel Drake were thrilled to establish a similar program with Wits. "This is a great opportunity for English majors to gain hands-on experience in a field many don't realize is open to them," Drake affirms.
Two students were selected from the slew of applications. They remain overjoyed to be helping out with a show they already loved. Senior Jillian Jacob got to meet a comedy hero backstage. "Waiting for the show to start, I had a brilliant moment with Paul F. Tompkins," she recalls. "I sound star struck, but really it's just the opportunity to speak with a person successfully working toward what they've always wanted. It's admiration of ambition. I had to tell him how fantastic his wardrobe was. He wears ten-piece suits daily. It isn't an act; he just wears them every day. He looks like a time traveler from the 1800s. He, being polite, complimented my outfit. I explained it was a poor choice for physically running after my boss at show time. He laughed. Paul F. Tompkins laughed at my joke."
Anderson shares her enthusiasm. "We're thrilled to have two students with us now, and we're excited to be able to support their development with hands-on opportunities as they explore their own interests in radio production, live performance, and comedy writing."
These internships are just one of the ways English provides practical experience for its majors. In the year-long class Literary Magazine Production Lab, students edit, design, market, and produce the University of Minnesota's undergraduate art and literary magazine Ivory Tower, gaining invaluable publishing skills and knowledge. And the department's Literacy and American Cultural Diversity and Community Learning Internships classes combine academic study with experiential and service learning in order to explore the connections between literature and literacy, theory and practice, educational institutions and different cultures and communities.
"This has been an incredible experience thus far," Wits intern Segal declares. "I've learned how to write in a way that is creative while still getting across very concrete information." Both interns were delighted to research content for a monologue in which comedian Jim Gaffigan read "particularly awful" one-star Amazon reviews of classic books and movies. And each will be shadowing and then subbing for Hans Buetow, Coordinating Producer for National Arts and Ideas Programming at American Public Media, to help run the live show in late December.
"The department's partnership with Wits is another great example of the importance of alumni connections," says Philippon, Director of Undergraduate Studies. "We're incredibly proud of Larissa Anderson's achievements as the producer of Wits, and we're equally grateful for this new internship program, which serves both Wits and our students well. Wits can benefit from our students' skills in writing and researching, and our students can gain real-world experience in audio production and broadcasting. Everybody wins!"
