WHUS Radio, the University of Connecticut’s student-run radio station, hosted a panel for the first time at MediaFest 2025, a national media and journalism convention hosted in Washington, D.C., where members shared the lessons they’ve learned in operating a student-run radio station.
The panel, which was titled “How to Radio: Lessons from a Student-Run Radio Station,” consisted of WHUS General Manager Gillian Brown, News Director Katie Servas, Training Director Henry St. Pierre and Program Director Lily Goldblatt. The panel was held at 4 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 17.
MediaFest is “the nation’s largest media convention for pros and college students,” according to the event’s website. The event happens every two years and is sponsored by the Associated Collegiate Press, the College Media Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. MediaFest 2025 was held from Oct. 15 to 18 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in D.C.
The panel started with Brown talking about how the WHUS board is set up, including how employees are paid, how the executive board operates compared to the operations board and how decisions are made amongst the organization.
This was followed by St. Pierre talking about WHUS’ training process for DJs and Goldblatt talking about how she gets people approved to air and creates the schedule, including a point-based system where students who are more involved with WHUS get priority in the scheduling process.
Servas finished the panel by talking about WHUS’ different committees, including its news, sports and new music committees, along with the different events they host for the student body.
“We focused on the overall daily running of WHUS,” Servas said. “Talking about how we schedule all of our DJs, how we train our DJs, how we produce content, where we produce content, more of the administrative side and… all of the nitty gritty little things that not everyone would necessarily think about.”
Goldblatt talked about the reception to the panel in an email.
“I think it went really well,” Goldblatt wrote. “We had a turnout of around 40 people and a lot of them were either also involved in student radio or did something with a community radio station. After our presentation, we had a lot of interest in how we organize things, and we got questions about implementing some of our policies for scheduling.”
“I’m very proud of my fellow employees and my fellow WHUS-ers and how they did,” Brown said. “The actual panel went really well. Everyone spoke great, we looked awesome… I hope that we really connected with the people who attended.”
WHUS had never hosted a panel at a media convention before, according to Brown, which made the preparation for the event “very nerve-wracking.”
“The entire day, I was just, like, vibrating,” Brown said. “I was checking my notes when I had downtime, I was rewriting things in the moment. It was very nerve-wracking, especially because there weren’t too many panelists that were also students… it felt like a lot of pressure to speak to an audience that was very much our peers.”
The idea to be panelists was initially thought of by Servas after she saw a panel from a student-run radio station at a College Media Association convention in Spring 2025.
“I just remember leaving that panel, I was like ‘Wow, it was great to hear what they do, but we do more,’” Servas said. “We provide so much for our community, we create so much content daily, weekly, monthly, we provide a lot of opportunities for students socially and I think that we’re in a position where we can share that.”
After Servas heard about MediaFest, she decided to work with the WHUS board to apply for a panel.
“I thought it would be a really cool opportunity for us to also just self-promote and connect with other college radio stations,” Servas said. “So, with the support of the WHUS boards, I submitted the request. And when we got approved, I was so excited.”
Servas and Goldblatt talked about how being student-run factored into the preparation for the presentation.
“I think people don’t always realize that everything we do is for students, by students,” Servas said. “To emphasize that and share what we’ve learned about our peers and how to run a community-driven organization, while also having to manage our own personal lives, I think gave us a really cool angle.”
“WHUS has been around for over 100 years, so we’ve had a lot of history of trial and error to build off of,” Goldblatt wrote. “We also serve both a very large student community as well as the greater Mansfield area, so we have a big audience for a student radio station. Because of this, we’ve had to conceive of ways to get our constituents involved in what we do.”
Brown said WHUS would “absolutely” considering hosting more panels.
“I personally hope that we see a lot of initiatives like this in the future,” Brown said.