Nicole Walton

WNMU-FM (Marquette) Morning Host/News Director Nicole Walton is highlighted this week in Northern Michigan University's "Northern Today."  Walton, who has over two decades of experience at the station, started at the station as a student employee while pursuing an English degree.

“Former choir director Floyd Slotterback made an announcement one day in class that the station had expressed a need for student employees,” Walton said. “I thought to myself, ‘I can do that,' which was a silly thing to say because once I got the job and started training, it became ‘There's no way I can do this' because there were too many things to think about: this lever goes up, this button needs to be pushed and this is what you have to say—all at the same time. But I eventually got it, and here I am so many years later.”

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1993, and following a graduate school stint at Miami University of Ohio and moves to Indiana and Wisconsin, she decided the Upper Peninsula was where she needed to be.

Walton moved back to Marquette, where she had resided most of her life, and volunteered at the station on weekends while working at the prosecutor's office. When an opportunity for full-time employment at WNMU-FM surfaced, she made a career shift and has not looked back.

“Getting up at 4:30 in the morning is really the only thing I don't like about my job,” Walton said. “A friend of mine once said, ‘You never get used to it, you become immune to it.' Getting feedback is one of the better parts of the job, though, and I really don't take it for granted. If I were to meet someone who listens to my newscast and they say, ‘I listen to you on the radio all the time,' I know that it means that I'm a part of their lives. And that's not something I take lightly.”

Read the complete story in Northern Today here.