MSUM to name TV studio after longtime professor, former WDAY anchor
By Josh Francis
MOORHEAD — The legacy of longtime WDAY-TV news anchor Marv Bossart, who died in 2013, will live on at the campus he taught at for more than 40 years.
Minnesota State University Moorhead, where Bossart taught as a professor, is dedicating its completed television studio in Bossart’s name at 1:30 p.m. today
Bossart had an impact on many journalists working in the Fargo-Moorhead area and elsewhere, including current WDAY anchor Kerstin Kealy, who took two of Bossart’s classes when she attended MSUM from 1993-1997.
“He was just one of those dynamic teachers who was doing in real life what he was teaching,” Kealy said.
Kealy went from being one of Bossart’s students to working with him for a few years at WDAY, where she started in 1997 after graduating from college. Kealy said Bossart was one of the big reasons WDAY hired her. Because she hadn’t done an internship, Bossart’s recommendation was all the more important.
“The news director was less than eager to give me a job,” Kealy said. “(Bossart) pushed for me to have an opportunity to work here. He really fought for me to get a job.”
She became an anchor for the station after working at WDAY for several years. One of her first co-anchors was Bossart, who retired from WDAY in 2000. He taught at MSUM until 2009.
Kealy also began filling in for Bossart at MSUM, teaching one of his classes, and she still teaches today. She said Bossart’s lessons stuck around.
“I still pass along the lessons that he taught me, to my students now,” Kealy said. “It’s been a long time. They stuck with me that much.”
Martin Grindeland, one of Bossart’s colleagues at MSUM in the mass communications department, said Bossart’s merits were numerous and naming the school’s new television studio after him has been in the works for a while.
The new studio will be called the Marv Bossart Television Studio and it includes equipment from the old WDAY news set.
“He was an amazing professor,” Grindeland said. “He was a great storyteller, and it was wonderful for everyone to have him around because he would tell jokes in between classes and he was always very, very outgoing and seemed to be enjoying life.”
Article published on InForum.