Cougars in the Wild: Alumna worked in TV before returning to SIUE as mass comm broadcast engineer

CHLOE WOLFE opinion editor

After finding her “niche” at SIUE, Theresa Pauli, a broadcast engineer in the Mass Communications department, worked in broadcast news for 30 years before re-entering the education world and helping others find their calling in mass communications.

When Pauli first came to SIUE as a student, said she did not know what she wanted to study. Then one day, a friend from high school invited her to come volunteer at the campus radio station, WSIE, FM The Sound.

“I majored in a little bit of everything for a minute, like psychology and political science. I just kind of kept bouncing around,” Pauli said. “Then I ran into an old friend from high school and she said, ‘Hey, I’m working at the radio station, you should come over.’ So I did, and that’s kind of what got me into it.”

It was through working at the radio station that Pauli found friends and a love for mass communications.

“I thought I fit in here,” Pauli said. “I didn’t have that moment when a teacher said something amazing, instead I had that moment when I was like, ‘Wow, these are my people.’ I found somewhat of a home. I thought maybe this is a field I want to get into.”

When Pauli was still going through school, she began volunteering at local news station KPLR TV as a runner, or as she described it, a ‘gopher.’ Pauli said that her job was to run tapes or do whatever else they needed, like running the teleprompter.

While she was still volunteering at the news station, Pauli got a call from the news director saying someone had walked out and they needed a fill-in. She was hired as a production assistant and began shadowing people.

At this time, Pauli said she followed the few women who worked at the station at the time. From one of these women, she learned to edit video footage, which she was eventually hired to do part-time and then later full-time.

“I started hanging around another woman because there were not many women, especially on the technical side,” Pauli said.

“There were a couple anchors and reporters and one woman video editor, but there were no women photographers and no women engineers until one was hired eventually.”

After working as a freelance video editor for a few years, Pauli said one of the video journalists was unable to film anymore, so she was told she was going to have to start doing fieldwork.

“I remember the first shoot I ever got was a fire in a factory in St. Louis,” Pauli said. “I got the camera out and the tripod out, then I was literally running around the camera like, ‘Oh, my God, where’s the power switch?’

It was actually a very sunny day but it looked like it was overcast, because I didn’t have the iris set. It wasn’t very glamorous.”

During her time at the TV stations in St. Louis, Pauli said she covered several different stories like sports events, a Pope visit, floods and missing kids.

According to Pauli, her biggest story was the Ferguson unrest.

At the time the unrest began, Pauli was working the morning shifts from 11 p.m. to 8:30 a.m., and around 5 a.m., the reporter she was working with informed her they would have to go over to Ferguson in front of the police department to get film for stories later in the day.

Then, the reporter Pauli was working with decided they needed to stay out in the field until 10 a.m. because there was going to be a press conference. Pauli said she was confused as to why the press conference was being held on a Sunday.

“We didn’t understand the enormity of the story at this point. We hadn’t watched any news because we were probably in bed when it was all unfolding,” Pauli said. “This was unusual, you knew it was a big story. So we set up.”

As they were waiting for the press conference to begin, Pauli said she noticed a large crowd slowly making its way to where they were waiting.

“I was still there until about noon or one. There were, I think, 1,000 people in the street, and then that’s when the protest started for months,” Pauli said. For the remainder of the unrest, Pauli said that she covered many different memorials.

“I remember shooting in March. I was almost in tears; it was moving and unbelievable to be there,” Pauli said. “I was right in the middle of that - recording history. It’s funny because you don’t know when you’re out there that what’s happening is history.”

Pauli worked in the industry for 30 years before she decided it was time for a change because she wanted to spend more time with her family.

“I went and resigned to the news director. I didn’t tell anybody, and I felt sick to my stomach,” Pauli said. “I was so scared to leave because it was my life, but my kids were my life too.”

After resigning from the TV industry, Pauli applied for the broadcast engineer position in the Department of Mass Communications at SIUE.

When she first started working for the university in December 2019, Pauli said she was scared she had made a mistake because, in the news industry, she never had idle time. Now she was not doing anything because the students were already gone. When the spring semester began, though she said she finally started to find her place before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the school to shut down.

“When I first came here I thought, ‘Oh my god, I made a mistake,’” Pauli said. “But now that we’ve been back, I think I’ve kind of found a groove. I love all the people and meeting the students.”

While working, Pauli said she spends her time maintaining equipment used by the Department of Mass Communications and helping students make connections within the TV industry.

“It took leaving there and then working here to realize how many people I know [in the TV industry],” Pauli said. “I’ve got all these people that respected my work ethic all those years, and trust me and are willing to give students a chance.”

Pauli also helps out in Intro to Audio & Video Production, where she helps students with the equipment used in the class such as video cameras and recording devices.

“I love teaching students how to use equipment, do interviews and be on camera because I lived and breathed it for 30 years,” Pauli said. “Even though I was never on camera, I coached people on how to do it. It’s fun when I meet students, and I’m like ‘Wow ‘you’ve got presence.’”