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Anyone who visits the University Library passes Cal State Long Beach's jazz radio station, KLON, along the way.
Still, other than CSULB broadcast journalism students, most people have no idea who is in charge of training students at KLON.
Meet Nick Roman.
Nick Roman is the man responsible for many a thing at KLON-88.1. Particularly relevant to CSULB students, he is the man who teaches tricks of the radio trade.
Roman has been at KLON for almost 15 years. Since 1992 he has taught CSULB broadcast-journalism classes to prepare broadcast-hopefuls for the real world of radio.
"My class is turning more toward hard news; that's what the market is looking for. It is always my goal - to help students gain experience for big stations - by getting them polished here at KLON," Roman said.
- Nick Roman
One of Roman's techniques for polishing students is scheduling frequent mock news conferences for them which cover a variety of subjects. Former student, Cara Frieden is a veteran of the conferences.
"These news conferences prepared me for the real world. Nick once even scheduled two conferences back-to-back so that the students knew what it was like . . . to rush to get a story in and head right onto the next. Not only that, Nick had the second conference at an uncomfortable location to teach us that these conferences were not always in air-conditioned, nice locations."
Roman also provides his students with on-air time.
Another of Roman's students, Christopher Hayes, who studied under Roman last semester, spoke about his on-air training.
"It was a great experience to be able to get a story of mine aired on a real radio station and hear my voice," Hayes said.
Roman says he's got plenty of tricks up his sleeves for next semester, adding: "I'll teach as long as they ask me to. I'm having a great time, and I'm getting great talent. The last class I had was the most talented class I've ever had. All students got on air!"