Kansas State University

search

College of Arts & Sciences eNewsletter

Tag: students

Anthropology Professor Launches New Podcast

Associate Professor of Anthropology at K-State Mike Wesch is determined to shake up traditional teaching methods and the ways faculty and students interact with and understand each other.

Three people sitting in a radio production studio. Two are young male students and one is professor Mike Wesch, creator of the "Life 101" poscast.
Wesch (far right) discusses “Life101” story ideas with students during a production team meeting.

Wesch has been dubbed “the prophet of an education revolution” by the Kansas City Star and “the explainer” by Wired magazine. He was named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic and has won several major awards for his work, including the US Professor of the Year Award from the Carnegie Foundation and the Wired Magazine Rave Award. His videos, which touch on issues of pedagogy and cultural understanding, have been viewed more than 20 million times, translated into 20 languages and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide.

His latest project is a podcast, “Life101,” in which he seeks to tell the stories of college students through their own words and share their lived experiences in their own spaces. The goal? To lay bare the multifaceted, complicated, unique and ever-changing lives of modern students for a generation of faculty who are content to rely on Millennial stereotypes.

“The end game [of this research] is to allow all teachers and students to see past the stereotypes that lock us in to thinking this or that way about different people and about college life,” Wesch said. Continue reading “Anthropology Professor Launches New Podcast”