Nov. 30, 2006

Professor leaving Marietta

Elysia Wright
Emw001@marietta.edu

With fall semester coming to a close, students are preparing to return home and wish friends farewell for the 6 week winter break. Mass media students will be wishing a very important farewell to friend and Assistant Professor of Communications and Mass Media, Mike McNamara. After 7 years of calling McKinney Mass Media Center home, McNamara will be leaving not just Marietta College, but the Mid-Ohio Valley area to move to Indiana.

McNamara won’t be retiring from “the business,” though. He recently accepted a position in the communications department of Tri-State University in Angola, IN, whose main campus is quite similar to that of Marietta.

He also will serve as a communications consultant with a startup company that produces antimicrobial products that could potentially be used for homeland security, healthcare, or education.

McNamara is originally from Cleveland, OH and is a US Air Force veteran.

“I’ve been associated with radio and television since serving as a staff announcer for the Armed Forces Radio Network in the sixties and of, course, continue to pursue my broadcasting passion when freelance opportunities exist that do not interfere with my class schedule,” McNamara said.

McNamara has indeed done a wide variety of radio and television freelance projects around the area and also served as the 6pm and 11pm evening anchor for the WTAP ( Parkersburg area) news. Students of McNamara who are from the Mid-Ohio Valley area have not only grown up watching him on television but are now learning from him in the classroom.

“I would often take students along to observe or even to put them to work behind the scenes…running camera or helping in the booth. Often these opportunities led to internships or part-time work, and some have discovered the contacts they made are priceless,” said McNamara.

Junior mass media major Joshua Walker has a variety of reasons why students were are so fond of McNamara.

“He is friendly, inspiring, warm, and funny. Students like that and just feel like he cares,” Walker said, “They want to learn because he has fun teaching.”

Walker also had plenty of reasons why he and the rest of the department’s students will miss McNamara.

“I think I will miss hearing about all of his stories from “out in the business,” said Walker, “Mac has had so much experience out doing what we all hope to someday do that he always has a story to tell of a comedic mishap or a true success.”

The McKinney Mass Media Center plans to hold a farewell get-together for McNamara this Friday from 3-5pm; all past and present students and friends of McNamara are invited to stop by and wish him a final good luck and farewell.