What we do in COPLA: This Florida Tech Life
I’m not going to lie. As a member of the College of Psychology and Liberal Arts, it’s easy to feel forgotten about sometimes at Florida Tech. I mean, this is the Florida Institute of Technology, a place where rockets are built, planes are flown and innovations are pioneered.
Just take a look at some of my fellow bloggers for example. In one of Brooke’s past posts she talks about how she and other students won a NASA space competition. Now they’re preparing to send a payload to the International Space Station! I’m not 100% sure what that means, but it’s the International Space Station, and they’re being mentioned in the same sentence? Sweet.
Then you have people like Alejandra over here talking about the development and building of robots on campus. Robots! Need I say more?
Well, you get the idea. But I’m not here to talk about all the mind-blowingly amazing things Florida Tech’s science and engineering students do (I’ll leave that to bloggers like Brooke and Alejandra). I’m here to show you that COPLA kids are cool too.
Enter Dr. Petersen and his “Publishing and the Internet” class from last semester, the creators of This Florida Tech Life. What is This Florida Tech Life? It’s the university’s own student/faculty podcast! But before I start talking about how exciting this project is, let me give you a quick history.
It started as a class project. Students were asked to come up with their own, original, newsworthy story. With ideas in their mind, they set off to track down stories and sources. The interviews between the students and sources were required to be recorded so the source’s actual voice (as well as any natural sounds) could be included on the podcast. Students also had to take photos, write a script, edit the audio files and write a story for print before finally publishing their podcast online.
The podcast turned out so well that Dr. Petersen and his class chose to continue the project this spring and to open up the microphone to the entire Florida Tech community. Thus, This Florida Tech Life was born.
Today, This Florida Tech Life webpage contains 11 student-produced stories divided into two episodes. Like the students of the university its name stems from, the stories featured on This Florida Tech Life are diverse, covering everything from Humans vs. Zombies (my personal favorite so far) to love at Florida Tech. The group is hoping to release a new episode each month.
So, we COPLA kids may be the little guys on campus, but as you can see we’re doing some pretty big things, too. If you’re interested in making your own podcast for This Florida Tech Life, visit the web page and click the contact button. You don’t even have to be in COPLA (although I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t be already). Don’t forget to keep checking back to the webpage to hear new stories and find out what This Florida Tech Life is all about!
