Communiqué
Former WOUB Student Built Career at GE with Skills Learned at WOUB
< < Back toRebecca Montague says broadcast skills were vital to her success
ATHENS, OH – The role of women in the workplace has changed significantly since Becky (Orosz) Montague graduated from Ohio University with a communication degree in 1969. But Montague says the skills she learned at WOUB when she was a college student helped her launch a fulfilling career.
“I went to high school in Cleveland and was one of the morning announcers,” said Montague. “I knew I liked being in front of people. I really wanted to go to college somewhere where I could go into speech therapy or broadcasting. I had a teacher that suggested Ohio University to me and off I went.”
It didn’t take Montague long to find the place she needed to work on campus to hone her skills.
“I was walking around campus within the first couple of days I was there, and there was a bulletin board that had information about WOUB,” said Montague. “I literally marched down to the station and signed up to work right then. WOUB became my sorority and fraternity. I never went Greek. WOUB had my people.”
Montague tried a little bit of everything when working at WOUB. She was a radio engineer, a continuity director and a program director. She worked writing promotion scripts for television and even had the opportunity to work with retired Sports Broadcaster Joe Tait, who went on to call the radio play by play for the Cleveland Cavaliers and both TV and radio for the Cleveland Indians, when he served as WOUB sports director from 1966 to 1968.
“I also had a radio show called Dinner Musicale from 5 to 6 p.m. I would play dinner music. We assumed people were eating dinner at that time,” said Montague.
However, after graduation, pursuing a broadcast career was put on hold. She got married, had children and did not focus on broadcast jobs.
“Unfortunately, it was a different time. There were not a lot of women back then who were married with young children working full time in the broadcast industry,” said Montague. “There was discrimination when applying for many jobs. At that point I found a job doing administrative work and moved on with my life.”
Montague later went to graduate school at Case Western University to pursue her MBA. She got into finance, sales and marketing work and retired from General Electric in 2010.
“I wound up with a great career,” said Montague. “If I didn’t learn what I did at Ohio University and WOUB, it wouldn’t have happened. Being able to get in front of a microphone and talk and not be intimidated, I learned that at WOUB. To be given the kind of responsibility I was given at WOUB, it makes a difference through life. We got to try different things especially with everything going on campus at that time: flooding, protests, the changing role of women and men. When you were at Ohio University, you could be a part of all of that, deal with it and learn to do it as an adult.”