The Mount is home to many student interests ranging from academics, athletics, leadership and religion. The Mount records podcasts on a bunch of different subjects which reflect the University’s diverse interests.
In the field of leadership and living the Mount motto, there are the podcasts “Live Significantly” by President Timothy Trainor and “Voice of Leadership” by iLead. For academic help and success, there are “Passion for Learning” and “Admit It!” For spiritual inspiration, “Catholic Town” and “Shepherds Gate” are recorded. The athletics department is responsible for the “Leading the Way” podcast for all sports-related conversations. All these podcasts share similar aspects, such as interviewing alumni and faculty, offering advice on how to navigate college life at the Mount and how to get involved to live significantly no matter the students’ interests.
Mount podcast hosts, Grant Henry of “Admit It!” and Emma Weinheimer of “Passion for Learning” had introspective comments to offer about their podcast experiences. Henry, the Assistant Director for Admissions at the Mount, has been an admissions counselor for five years. Henry says the purpose for Admit It! is “for admissions to have the opportunity to meet with current students and campus partners to talk more about aspects of the campus.” It features Henry and his co-hosts Asia Yates (’23) and Tayla Stewart (’23). Henry stated that both Yates and Stewart, “have a really wide background here at the Mount.” He is very happy to utilize two students as great resources for current and prospective students.
“Admit It!” can help students feel that they have support on campus and that the challenges they face may have been experienced by other students. It is all about student needs, and the team keeps that in mind when brainstorming what to talk about in each episode. Preparation for each episode is “an effort between the Marketing Department and the Admissions Communication Department where the team will ask for recordings talking about things such as outcomes or what students are doing after college,” explained Henry.
This podcast’s team focuses greatly on student successes and is enthused to inform the Mount community of such accomplishments. When asked why he joined the podcast team, Henry said, “We thought this could be a platform where students could hear us in the digital atmosphere as it came up from COVID-19, where we couldn’t offer visits at the time, but we could record students and hear about their life on campus.” Not only is the podcast a resource for students during the pandemic, it also shows Mount’s dedication to student success.
Weinheimer (C’22) is a Communication major and is minoring in Math, Spanish and Philosophy. She is the co-host of “Passion for Learning” with Dr. Joshua Hochschild in the Department of Philosophy. She explains that they “interview different Mount faculty members about different texts from the core curriculum and other books that are very influential.” This podcast allows students to understand some of Mount’s educational values and have different perspectives and texts from professors and experts in numerous fields.
When asked why she joined the “Passion for Learning” podcast, Emma responded, “I love to think about things, and I love making connections with books. Promoting the Catholic identity of the school is really important to me, so this is a way I can help further that.” For topic ideas Emma says that they generally to talk to professors in the humanities and ask them if they would like to share their readings or something in their area of expertise. Hearing an in-depth dialogue on how a professor thinks or what books they prefer is an excellent way to obtain academic knowledge.
Both Henry and Weinheimer express their dedication to the Mount community by giving them tools and advice through the podcasting platform. The podcasts can be found on the University website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other streaming services.