The BYU-Idaho Alumni Office has released its first two episodes of a new podcast featuring alumni from BYU-Idaho.
"The BYUI Mighty Oaks Series" will have 14 episodes during its first season. The first episode featured an interview with Donald Kelly, known as the "Sales Evangelist" on his podcast. Loretta Kumire is the student who interviewed alumni for the first season. She asks questions about the alumni's experience at BYU-Idaho, how they transitioned to life after college and what it's like to work in their field. She asked Kelly why he came to BYU-Idaho, even though he was from Florida.
"I applied to BYU, BYU-Idaho before my mission in 2004 and my big thing was, I wanted to go to a church school to get an education and also the spiritual atmosphere," Kelly said. "Being from Florida it's always the pleasure or dream of everyone to go to Utah or out west, and when I got accepted to BYU-Idaho I was super excited. I was thrilled about it."
The idea for a podcast grew out of what the alumni office was already doing, which was writing articles about alumni.
"We wanted to give the students at BYU-Idaho, and the alumni, the opportunity to hear from alumni, their experience in college, their travels through the educational area, and their transition from college to the workforce," said Rob Ahrendsen, the alumni relations coordinator. "So we just wanted to get their stories and how they became successful and what they're doing."
Marco Reyes is now the lead student on the podcast series. He said the name for the series comes from a quote by the school's founder Jacob Spori who said, "The seeds we're planting today will grow and become mighty oaks and their branches will run all over the earth."
"These people we interview are just a few of the many mighty oaks that have left the university and we want to be able to show the students that it's possible, so possible for anybody to go out and their branches will reach," Reyes said. "We have such a big influence and people don't realize that."
The interviews are released twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Click here for a list of podcast platforms.