MPR hosts Emerging Voices event

On Thursday, Nov. 20, from 4 to 6 p.m., CSB+SJU students can attend an interactive design workshop hosted by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), featuring gift cards and pizza.

Participants will identify opportunities to improve public interest media and prototype solutions for peer feedback with the chance to work with MPR, present their project, and make it a reality.

CSB+SJU is just one of the Minnesota colleges and universities selected to be a part of this project.

It was chosen for several reasons, including its prestige, rural area and history with MPR.

“CSB+SJU has continuously been a good school in Minnesota and the US, but it’s also located in a more rural area. This enables us to be able to connect with some of the different perspectives and needs of our community. It also can’t be understated the impact that St. John’s, especially, has had, being where MPR was originally founded. MPR’s first broadcast was out of St. John’s, so having those roots is going to make St. John’s one of our top priorities,” said Theon Masters, Glen Nelson Center investment manager and project manager.

The College Emerging Voices Project (CEVP), funded by the Glen Nelson Center at APMG, is designed to bring college students directly into the conversation about the future of public media.

At its core is one essential question: How can MPR News become more relevant in helping college students make sense of their world?

“Young people, college students, don’t really listen to or engage with public media very much. As the media landscape continues to change, where people aren’t listening to the radio and they may be getting their News from platforms like Instagram, YouTube or other places, there’s been this bubbling question of how public radio and social media should think about their role moving forward in helping to engage and educate. So, this project came to form,” said Kate Ryan Reiling, project lead.

One student team from the workshop will be chosen to refine their concept and present it at the in-person Idea Showcase hosted by MPR in February.

This team will gain access to MPR’s internal experts and staff to further develop their concepts in preparation for the showcase.

Promising student teams will be invited to MPR headquarters for a half-day.

Students will further develop their concept at MPR and then present their refined ideas to members of MPR’s senior team.

Winning teams will receive cash prizes, and the top idea/team will be awarded the chance to come into the studios and collaborate with MPR staff to create a version of what they imagined.

Rather than relying on typical focus groups or surveys, CEVP offers students the opportunity to actively co-create, prototype and present their ideas alongside MPR staff.

By including participants from a broad range of Minnesota colleges, the project gathers a diversity of perspectives on students’ media expectations and the innovations they would like to see.

On Jan. 22, 1967, Minnesota Public Radio had its first broadcast from St. John’s University. With the call sign KSJR-FM, the station was a 40,000-watt classical music station with the initial goal of bringing Benedictine culture and public affairs to the central Minnesota and Twin Cities communities.

This first broadcast marked the beginning of what would become Minnesota Public Radio.

The founder of MPR, William Hugh Kling, was a St. John’s alum who turned the first station into a separate nonprofit community corporation (MPR), of which Kling was the founding president.

Over the years, he helped lead the station to grow into a statewide network in Minnesota while building similar networks in California and Florida.

“It’s a nice kind of homecoming for MPR to come up and run it there [CSB+SJU],” Ryan Reiling said.