JUNE 7, 2021 — Podcasts have soared in popularity in recent years, and now UTSA students are getting into the act. Honors College freshmen have collaborated to create podcasts for Storytelling Across Media, a course taught by Honors College lecturer Amy Hauck.
The mission of the course is to “explore the literary legacy of storytelling as a way to actualize identity, preserve history, provide social testimony, cultivate empathy, encourage social responsibility, and generate knowledge through engaging and sharing narrative.”
The three cohorts that have taken the course have engaged in multifaceted ways to study fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and multimedia. However, the primary emphasis was given to oral history as they explored the power of narrative.
In groups of three to four students, they created podcasts for their final projects. Each podcast explores a different topic in-depth through a storyteller’s lens. The students conducted interviews with experts from the UTSA community, including Honors College academic counselor and lecturer Alegra Lozano (Ending) and University Distinguished Scholar in Mestizo Cultural Studies John Phillip Santos (Creating).
Student groups then transcribed all nine of their interviews, which must consist of three students, three faculty, and either three professors emeriti or faculty who have been at UTSA more than 20 years. They went on to identify storylines and build a script. Next, they chose a narrator, recorded the narration and edited the whole thing to deliver a final product that was less than 15 minutes in length.
Although each podcast only covers one topic, the students strived to incorporate unique and unexpected perspectives on that topic. For example, the podcast entitled Stressing deals with personal stress, but also deals with stress on economies and the kind of stress on buildings that engineers must take into account when they are designing structures.
With each new group, came a fresh crop of interests and perspectives were explored. The library of podcasts has grown to 14 and it will continue to grow as Hauck continues to teach this course in the future.
She collaborated with the Institute of Texan Cultures to acquaint students with best practices for recording, interviewing, and capturing oral histories. She also joined forces with local consultants from Texas Public Radio, as well as Actors from the London Stage to help students develop their skillsets of voice acting and script building.
When designing the course, Hauck decided she wanted to incorporate podcasts so that students could “engage in storytelling in their everyday environments at UTSA through a medium they were not used to.” While the course design and project layout was entirely her own, Hauck said she took inspiration for the final product from shows like This American Life and The Stanford Storytelling Project.
Students left the class with the skills necessary to create their own podcasts in the future. “With apps like Anchor and software readily available—such as Garage Band, Audacity, and the like—it is relatively easy to begin producing your own content with a little bit of training and effort,” Hauck said.
In fact, two of Hauck’s former students, Mufaro Chitakure and Jesly Johnson, have plans to do just that. Chitakure purchased a microphone and he’s been using it to hone his skills while he decides whether he wants to go public with a podcast of personal stories. Johnson, a cybersecurity major, says she too may create a podcast focused on her area of study.
Both agree that the benefits they gained from the course extend beyond simply learning how to create podcasts. “In a more general sense, the class really helped me become more comfortable approaching professors as a freshman since we had to approach them for interviewing,” Chitakure said.
Johnson said that the course helped her prepare for her current job as an Honors peer coach. “The main task as peer coaches is to ask questions that will empower students to acknowledge their dreams or goals and provide them with the resources needed to fulfill them. As a result, framing questions in the proper way is crucial,” Johnson explained. She added that the knowledge she gained from the course would also aid her in a future cybersecurity career. “Cybersecurity majors have a strong connection to stories. During the incident response process after an intrusion has been detected, we must ask ourselves what story the evidence in front of us is telling us.”
Podcasts from the course can be heard on Soundcloud. “There are so many great ones that represent hours of hard work,” Hauck said. “And for all that, many amazing stories weren’t able to make it into the final cut—that is one of the hard parts of editing something like this. Students generally start out thinking ‘there’s no way I can do this.’ But when it’s all said and done, most everyone is surprised by what they accomplished.”
UTSA Today is produced by University Communications and Marketing, the official news source of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Send your feedback to news@utsa.edu. Keep up-to-date on UTSA news by visiting UTSA Today. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.
Archaeology 201 will briefly go over the foundations of archaeology and related skills, followed by a different topic over the course of this week (like skeletal analysis, global cultures, and more).
Center for Archaeological Research, UTSA Main CampusCraft a comic to create your own narrative and find your voice through storytelling. Participants will learn to create characters that are self-reflective and through a community lens.
REGSS Community Room (DB 3.202,) UTSA Downtown CampusJoin the Student Involvement Center and the Whataburger Resource Room (Food-Pantry) for a service project! Help us prepare for the Roadrunner Days Move-In Market on Thursday, July 25 from 11 AM - 2 PM by assisting us with the following volunteer needs. We are preparing for UTSA's largest garage sale, but everything is free for our students!
BK Lot 5 Building (Next to Campus Garden), Main CampusCome enjoy a discussion on art as a self expression in the age of moving technology and telling your story with a community.
REGSS Community Room (DB 3.202,) UTSA Downtown CampusThe UTSA Veteran and Military Office will be holding a social event for our new military-affiliated students to come out and meet our office, staff, and other students.
MB 0.100, Ground Floor Lobby, Main BuildingThe Student Union invites you to join us for Kickback at the Union, a fun event designed to get you acquainted with all of the services available in the Student Union!
Student UnionInterested in learning more about the different fraternities and sororities in the Multicultural Greek Council? Come meet our organizations and enjoy free food and music.
Retama Galleria (SU 2.02,) Main CampusThe University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
We encourage an environment of dialogue and discovery, where integrity, excellence, inclusiveness, respect, collaboration and innovation are fostered.
UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education .
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to promoting access for all. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.