Stan Sollars
Senior Producer, Morning Edition host

Stan Sollars joined IPR and Ball State’s Telecommunications (TCOM) faculty in 1992. It’s all the result of his parents giving him a G.E. portable tape recorder for Christmas when he was 10. He started recording comedy skits, documentaries (with research via his World Book Encyclopedias), and interview shows featuring his neighbors and schoolmates. His media career officially began at age 13 when he wrote and produced educational radio programs for his high school’s FM station (WDHS at Wes-Del), and was a student correspondent for the Muncie Evening Press. While in college, he was a news and feature "stringer" for WIBC and WNAP in Indianapolis under the guidance of legendary news director Fred Heckman.

After earning B.S. and M.A. degrees in journalism (BSU, ’78 & ’80), he narrated documentaries for McGraw-Hill Broadcasting and produced more than 250 episodes of the Indiana history radio series, The 19th State. The series won numerous regional and national awards and has episodes residing in New York’s Museum of Television and Radio. Two episodes written and produced by Stan were independently nominated for the George Foster Peabody Award. Since 1994 he has produced and engineered 75 hours of network programming worldwide on the series Rock and Roll America for National Public Radio (NPR) and Indiana Public Radio.

Today, he teaches TCOM’s beginning and advanced digital audio classes and is creating a third undergraduate TCOM audio class in 5.1 surround sound (which debuts in the summer of 2003). Since the summer of 1995 Stan has anchored and edited Indiana Public Radio’s Morning Edition newscasts. His newscasts have won 14 Best Newscast awards since 1995 from the Indiana Associated Press (AP), the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA).

In 2000 his April 15, 1999 IPR newscast won a regional Edward R. Murrow award (1st place) from RTNDA, 1st place for Best Newscast from the Indiana AP, and 1st place for Best Newscast from the Indiana SPJ. He is a member of the IPR news team that won regional Edward R. Murrow Awards from RTNDA for overall excellence in 1999, 2000 and 2001.

In 2000 he received an EMMY nomination for TV program production audio design from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and 1st Place for radio public service programming from the Indiana Broadcasters Association for an hour-long documentary on the Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley. Riley at 150 was produced for WFYI, Indianapolis, and aired on IPR and other stations, statewide. In the same year, he engineered the piano CD Piano Themes from the Silent Screen for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The disc has received a number of positive reviews for its composer Kevin Purrone, as well as for Stan’s audio work.

"I love it here at Ball State," Stan says. "I get to teach, write, perform, produce, edit, mix, and design the studios. It’s not work; it’s a privilege. It feels more like a ‘they-let-me-do-all-of-this’ situation, rather than a job."

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