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Mark Hall, MA '67

Describe Butte College.
We are a two-year community college located about 90 miles north of Sacramento, Calif. We are the largest radio/TV/film program in Northern California, in addition to being one of the few colleges in California to have a fully equipped remote TV production van. We are also the home of the area's public access TV station which reaches almost 100,000 cable homes in our area.

What do you do?
I am an instructor of radio/TV/film production. I am also in charge of the entire program. This means scheduling, budgeting, setting policy, etc.

How did you get your job?
I was hired via interviews because of my journalism background gained at the University of Missouri.

Best professional lesson learned at J-School?
To respect deadlines. Getting the job done on time is the most critical part of the process.

What is your favorite J-School memory?
The fire at KOMU-TV that almost burned the station to the ground as we were on the air. One moment I was typing a script, the next I was manning a fire extinguisher. The fire, if I remember correctly, happened around 1968. It started from an electrical short in one of the engineering racks in the building. The station was actually on air when the fire erupted. We were busy shooting film and trying to save material simultaneously. The station was closed for a few days, and major damage was from water and smoke. It took weeks to clean up the residue of both.

What would be your best advice to current students?
Gain basic technical skills in as many areas of mass communication as possible: photography, videography, graphic design, Web page design, etc.

What do you consider to be your greatest professional achievement?
Building the radio/TV/film program from scratch at Butte College.

What makes you good at your job?
I care about students.

What are your next career steps?
I am getting ready to retire in a few years, so I will be pursuing many new paths.

What is something about you that might surprise people?
I was a blackjack dealer. I was a dealer during the summer of 1964. I got the job because the casinos in those days hired large numbers of college students to handle the summer tourist crowd in the Lake Tahoe, Nev., area.