New telecommunications and film professor Mike Bruce said he learned the meaning behind the saying “everything happens for a reason” when he was a junior in high school.
“My interest, when I was in high school, was photography, and I accidently discovered TV production,” said Bruce, recalling a college tour that made him change his entire career path.
“The tour guide told me that the university was starting a new major in telecommunications and was building a new broadcasting facility,” Bruce said. “I left campus that day with plans to major in video production.”
Bruce, an Oklahoma City native, came to the University to teach sports broadcasting classes.
His decision to come here was partially influenced by his friendships within the TCF department already. Professor Pamela Tran is a longtime friend of Bruce’s and is happy to have someone with such experience in the department.
“The field of sports broadcasting is expanding daily in directions that provide lots of jobs, but in areas you might not be aware of,” Tran said. “That’s why I am so excited about having Michael Bruce on our team; he is ahead of the curve in terms of knowing the skills the students will need and the jobs they can get with those skills.”
Prior to his arrival at Alabama, Bruce also taught broadcast journalism at Oklahoma Baptist University for 13 years. For Bruce, the biggest difference between the schools has nothing to do with the students themselves.
“The biggest difference is the size of the department and the number of students,” Bruce said. “The enthusiasm for learning and growing among students is the same.”
Bruce graduated from The University of Oklahoma, where he studied journalism and mass communication with a focus in broadcasting. He went on to obtain a master’s degree in broadcast management and is currently working on his Ph.D.
After college, Bruce began to work in the specific field of sports broadcasting after a friend asked him to help out with the production of a local basketball game in Oklahoma City. From there, his career in the field took off.
“Over the next few years, I began to be hired more often as a freelance producer, director, and technical director of live televised sporting events [high school, college, and professional],” Bruce said.
Bruce has produced and directed many different types of sporting events, from football to hockey. He says he has covered as many as 50 sporting events per year within the past few years. However, Bruce is not a sports fanatic.
“I enjoy sports, but I don’t pay attention to sports to nearly the extent most people assume,” Bruce said. “I guess I enjoy televising live sporting events because I’m an adrenaline junkie, and for those two to three hours the event is on the air, I really can’t think about anything else.”
Bruce’s students say that they feel they are benefitting from Bruce’s extensive experience. Zac Sewell, a senior majoring in telecommunications and film, enjoys Bruce’s personality and hopes the professor will be able to help him out in the future.
“He’s very laid back, which I really like, since we’re under a lot of pressure to get stuff done before graduation,” Sewell said. “He seems really knowledgeable in the sports field, and hopefully he’ll be able to get us a job when we get out the door.”
