This past summer, WQAQ, the student-run radio station underwent serious improvements.

Last semester students who had shows could only have two people at a time in the main studio and one person in studio B. Now, after two years of planning, two months of rebuilding and about $80, 000 later, Mark Langan, senior Media Productions major and general manager of WQAQ, is proud to show off the station with all-new, state of the art equipment and a beautifully redesigned studio.

“We’re at the next level,” Langan said. “Fundamentally, we have one of the better college radio stations in the nation and now we have the studio and equipment to show for it.”

At the holiday dinner in 2003, President John Lahey noticed how dated the station was, which hadn’t been updated since 1990, and mentioned it to Langan. Langan agreed and decided that since he already had support from Lahey, it was time to make plans to reconstruct and improve the radio station. In April of 2004, he went to Manny Carreiro, vice president and dean of students who approved the plan within two weeks.

With support from Lahey and Carreiro, Langan and Scott Hazan, assistant director of the student center worked together to make plans and the budget for this massive project. Joanne Leddy, project coordinator for the facilities department played a major role in the project, contacting and making plans with various architects.

Originally, the architects came up with an expensive plan for reconstruction, so the Facilities Department decided to put the project on hold forcing Langan and Hazan to scale-down. The goal was to create a studio with more useable space. The old studio only had room for two people at a time. Three person shows had to have one person sit in Studio B, off to the side while the other two were in the Studio A.

“The studio was not set up right,” Hazan said. “We wanted to create a better useable space for Studio A and an editing suite for production. We made a huge improvement by making the space we have more effective and useful.”

During the summer, architects tore down a wall to create the useable space needed to meet the demands of the station. Now, the horse shoe shaped main studio holds three people and there is a separate production suite. Both studios have the same capabilities while they didn’t in the past. The project took slightly under two months to complete and everyone seems happy with the improvements.

Hazan is also impressed with the work done and also with the work Langan put into this project. “When he came to me for help, I was excited,” Hazan said. “I have the attitude with students that if you have a desire to do something, come talk to me and we’ll try to make it happen.”

WQAQ is streaming online for 12 hours a day Monday through Friday. Students can dial extension 5555 directly from campus and also find their all-new, “from the underground up” themed Web site at www.wqaq.com.

“I hope the policies implemented by the staff continues,” Langan said. “I also hope our success continues and the new look and new attitude leaves a lasting effect on the campus.”