Points of Impact:
Academics:
Campus and Community Organizations:
- NAZ Today
- NAU Newman Center Catholic jacks
- Broadcasting Internship with KSNV News 3 Las Vegas
- NAU Omega Phi Alpha Service Sorority
Building Trust and Community, One Story at a Time
Before Colleen came to NAU she was focused on becoming a lawyer. She has a respect for uncovering the facts behind conflict, and the law looked like a good outlet for that interest. Then she learned that many lawyers stay in offices all day, with job descriptions sadly un-scripted by Shonda Rhimes. That is when she revamped her goals to align with a love of theater and an interest in political science by studying broadcast journalism instead.
With that decision under her belt, Colleen dug right in at NAU, and has been anchoring for NAZ Today since her freshman year. She is on a quest to bring back news that is news and not loudly voiced opinion. She believes that facts are being sacrificed to the more sensationalized partisan story-telling that characterizes many of today’s news outlets. She would like to provide news that trusts the American public to take in unfiltered information.
At NAZ Today, she has been helping to get the unvarnished news out Monday
through Friday at 6 PM. You can find it online, or on channel 4 and 104 locally. The team at NAZ Today provides the only live news broadcast focused on Northern Arizona. Colleen’s theater side loves the pressure of reporting live. There are no second tries! She also enjoys getting to know community members and their stories. She has gained experience anchoring, producing, and reporting stories through her involvement with the station. Colleen has become a multimedia journalist; she finds a story idea, lines up interviews, shoots footage and films her own interviews, then edits her footage and provides the voice over. Experience with this one-man-band approach to broadcasting, which is becoming increasingly common, has been invaluable. It helped her to land a summer internship in Las Vegas, where she will be getting even more hands-on time in a big city newsroom! She loves to follow the news from the idea stage to the final product of a neatly packaged and engaging story. Her experiences with NAZ Today have helped her to develop a passion for well-developed, balanced, and informative news.
Colleen has also found time to serve the Flagstaff and campus communities through involvement at the Newman Center and in her sorority – Omega Phi Alpha. Omega Phi Alpha is a service based sorority dedicated to completing at least 6 service projects each semester, although they usually find time to do three times as many. Colleen was the Service Director this year, and found that managing and organizing various projects while getting to know her sisters helped reconnect her to previous experiences serving others during high school. She got involved with Omega Phi Alpha her freshman year, and has since built relationships with the sisters she didn’t even know she had been missing as an only child.
Colleen continues her dedication to service in her involvement with the Newman Center, which includes leading Bible study for peers and connecting students to the Catholic Jacks ministries through an internship in multimedia marketing. She found a home away from home with peers who have also been called to serve, live, and learn for Christ. She is inspired by Pope Francis and his two most recent predecessors, and sees them as catalysts for a movement among young Catholics to take ownership of their faith and to connect their personal values with Catholic theology by putting that faith into the service of others.
Colleen has managed to connect her passion for serving others with the Church, with her sorority, and with her job at NAZ Today. She feels fortunate to have found so many possible ways to engage her passions. When reflecting on her own first days on campus, she was glad that she tried so many things and fully engaged from the beginning. She has tried some things she didn’t stick with, but has never regretted the trying. Colleen told me that Thomas Edison famously found 2000 ways to not make a lightbulb before he found success. She is excited about living a life dedicated to finding 2000 ways to not be herself in order to solidify the way only she can contribute, right at the spot where her passions intersect with the needs of the world.
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