Christine Stover is a student whose life is dominated by taking class and spending a great deal of time at the campus radio station, 88.3 WXOU.  Don’t worry though, this is still a professor profile.

An adjunct instructor of communication, Stover serves as the advisor to WXOU and is taking classes to complete her Ph.D in media studies at Wayne State University. She is studying ways in which news media communicates with disasters and is focusing on health crises because of their prevalence.

Stover née Cronauer completed her undergraduate degree in communication at Oakland University, but didn’t always plan on going into teaching. She said she wanted to go into radio broadcasting so she could meet a rock star, marry him and “live happily ever after.”

Needless to say, Dave Matthews never showed up to elope and she decided to become an academic during her junior year and went on to receive a master’s degree in broadcast with a focus on law and policy from Central Michigan University.

She was involved with WXOU during her undergraduate years and picked up right where she left off when she returned to Oakland as an instructor. She was also active with OUTV.

“It’s been a great experience because I like working with student on a one-on-one basis,” Stover, who has won awards for her advising, said of WXOU. “Every year it gets a little better than the year before. “

Starting fresh out of high school at the age of 23, she said young instructors may be a rarity in academia, but are more common in “relatively newer fields that attract a lot of younger people” like communication.

Currently she is overseeing the creation of an audio lab that will allow students in radio classes to get hands-on experience. She said it officially opens in winter at 105 Vandenberg Hall.

This semester, she is teaching two COM 285 Intro to Broadcasting classes and COM 301 Persuasion. As for her Dave Matthews obsession? She has only been to three shows.