After she graduated from high school, Shaw went back to serve as a speech team coach.
She spends an average of four hours each night working with students at Tech on their speeches then goes home to analyze famous speeches and write persuasive oratories, informative scripts for her team.
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Each Saturday, she gets up at 4 a.m. to take her students to speech meets.
She spends many evenings writing and preparing scripts, getting visuals and coaching her students on their speeches.
“It’s really cool because it’s really rewarding to work with students especially because speech is an activity that helps you literally no matter what field you go into,” she said.
Shaw is majoring in mass communications with an emphasis in broadcast journalism. She’s double minoring in marketing and communication studies.
Shaw came to St. Cloud State as a Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO) student spending her entire senior year at St. Cloud Tech High School on the St. Cloud State campus taking classes and learning what subjects interested her most. What she found was broadcast journalism and the University Television Station (UTVS), a student-run TV studio that provides sports and news programming to more than 33,000 households in the St. Cloud area via Charter Channel 180.
Piper Shaw is working toward a degree in mass communications while also teaching speech at her high school. Photo by Nick Lenz ’11
“It’s why I came here. It’s why I decided to stay in St. Cloud,” Shaw said. “The program we have here is the best in the country for broadcasting. Basically, if you want to be in broadcast journalism or production — this is pretty much the place to be.”
In her first official semester of college, she tried out for an anchor position but instead found her spot in reporting.
“I learned a lot really fast,” she said. “It put me ahead for the rest of my career here.”
During her time at St. Cloud State Shaw has been both an anchor and reporter for UTVS.
In her junior year, Shaw became the on-campus news station’s marketing director and in her senior year she’s also managing the station’s website.
On March 2 she was recognized for her hard work by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences – Upper Midwest Chapter with a $2,000 journalism scholarship. She earned three nominations from the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association this year.
Shaw has also written for the University Chronicle, done some work for KVSC and provided media work for Students Organized for Change.
“I’m very, very involved in UTVS, and the program has so much to offer students,” she said.
“The program we have here is the best in the country for broadcasting. Basically, if you want to be in broadcast journalism or production — this is pretty much the place to be.”
Staying in her hometown gave Shaw connections that helped her succeed as a mass communications major because she already had connections and knew where she was going without needing directions.
“I had all the resources I needed,” she said.
Shaw considers the industry talent teaching at St. Cloud State to be invaluable for mass communications students.
“The mass communications department has amazing professors,” she said. “We have professors who are current reporters at WCCO, who are industry leaders, and so it’s really nice to have learning from people who actually know what’s going on out in the real world.”
The producing professor is a current producer at KARE 11 and both reporting professors work at WCCO. These professionals take students on tours of their studios and help arrange job shadow opportunities. They also invite other industry professionals to come talk to students.
“It feels like a huge honor,” Shaw said. “… You’re being taught by the best of the best.”
