Three international broadcasting professionals toured Rogers State University’s radio and television facilities this week and met with faculty, staff and students to learn more about broadcasting management and journalistic practices in the United States.
The professional group was from the central Asian country of Kazakhstan, a former member of the Soviet Union with a population of more than 15 million people. The visitors included Mirbulat Kunbayev, director of the television company ERA Ltd., Yelena A. Fomchenko, senior advertising manager for Radio TEKS Ltd., and Tattygul Zh. Talayeva, director general for Tandem, a television and radio company.
Alan Lambert of RSU Radio and Steve Doyle, an RSU broadcasting student, provided a tour of the campus radio facilities, while Dale McKinney, RSU-TV production manager, provided a tour of the television studios and the non-linear video editing student labs. Cathy Coomer, RSU broadcasting faculty member and radio station general manager, met with the visitors to discuss academic issues and provide information on the radio station.
RSU is the only university in Oklahoma to operate its own full-power public television station, which broadcasts on UHF channel 35, Claremore and Tulsa cable channel 19, and more than 70 cable systems in northeastern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. The university also operates a campus radio station (KRSC, 91.3 FM) that is the only alternative college radio station in Oklahoma.
The university offers a bachelor’s degree in communications with options in radio-television or corporate communications, as well as an associate’s degree in radio-television.
The RSU visit was arranged through the U.S. State Department’s International Visitors Program and the Tulsa Global Alliance. The visitors were accompanied by William Bobbitt, an interpreter from the U.S. Department of State.