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Continuing a comprehensive overhaul of the on-campus radio station, 101.5 KWVS, that began a few years ago, the Communication Division hired Dr. Kara Gould as a new advisor for the student radio station.
Gould became part of Pepperdine community this summer, has a background in radio broadcasting.
“I was happy when Bob Chandler, the division chair, approached me with the idea of advising the radio station because I actually did student radio when I was in college,” Gould said.
After spending her childhood in Massachusetts and Arkansas, she graduated from Wheaton College near Chicago, Ill., with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in communication. She was asked to adjunct teach a journalism class while she was at Wheaton and decided to do it just for fun. Gould said she enjoyed teaching and saw it in her future. She got her doctorate degree at University of Utah and taught full-time at Weber State University. After finishing her dissertation there, she came to Pepperdine in July.
Gould was part of the radio station at Wheaton as a student and contributed to the University of Utah’s student radio station as an adviser.
“That gave me an opportunity to kind of be on the other side: I knew what it was like to be a student broadcaster and now to be the adviser,” she said. “It’s a great way for students to learn about broadcasting and communication in general.”
Asked what she thinks about Pepperdine’s KWVS, she said she is excited about advising at a relatively new station. But she is aware of the problem of its radio signal interference with a San Diego station.
“According to FCC (Federal Communication Commission), we are not supposed to be getting that interference, but reality is, San Diego stations often interfere with our radio stations,” she said. “This is the kind of things that that we are hoping to improve.”
Even though laws of physics prevent the radio station from fixing that type of problem, that doesn’t mean it can’t improve, Gould said.
“One thing we want to do is to continually improve our sound,” Gould said. “So as our audience increases, we are becoming a station with more and more programs and more and more students and so we are looking into growing that way, too. And if those two types of growth could happen simultaneously, and that would be perfect.”
Even though advising for the student radio station may sound like a busy job, that’s not the only thing she does at Pepperdine: She is teaching three classes this semester and spends her spare time doing research. On top of that, she is also a wife and mother of 6-year-old twin girls.
Submitted 09-28-2006
MALIBU, CA
