Abbee is Adrian College’s first female director of Media Production Services
Posted Thursday, June 02, 2022
Author: Mickey Alvarado
Adrian College Vice President of Enrollment and Student Affairs, Frank Hribar, Ph.D., said it was hard to let one of his best admission counselors go, but it was for the best — He recently promoted Meghan Abbee to the position of Director of Media Production Services and moved her over to Adrian College’s Media Production House.
Abbee is the first female Media Production Services Director at Adrian College.
“Meghan (Abbee) has proven to be a reliable, self-driven employee who can be counted on, and we are confident she will take those work ethics with her to the Media Production House and improve on the high quality services ACTV already offers,” Hribar said. “She will be hard to replace in our admissions office, but has earned this opportunity to step up into a director position at Adrian College, in a field she absolutely loves.”
Abbee, a Hanover, MI native now residing in Adrian, replaced Jay Hannah, who accepted a position as the Head of Educational Media at Wright Graduate University in Chicago.
Abbee earned two degrees in her three years at Adrian College. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design and a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in Communications. She obtained a head start on her degrees by joining a dual enrollment program in visual communications at Hanover Horton High School and attending the Jackson Area Career Center. She was able to get certifications in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop at the age of 16.
“When I graduated from that program it gave me 28 dual enrollment credits through Jackson College that transferred over to Adrian my freshmen year,” Abbee said.
She worked in the college’s Media Production House as a student, beginning her freshman year, and produced a majority of commercial video content that ran on the college’s live streams, in addition to creating graphics and B-roll content. She was key to having Adrian College TV (ACTV) begin regularly featuring athletes and teams of the week for engagement on social media.
Abbee also interned for JTV Studios and worked with Gabe Schray, a former Adrian College Media Production Services Director who was, “the voice of Adrian College.”
“When Gabe [Schray] started taking over ACTV, I was already working with him off campus, so it was an easy transition for me to take on the student director position while he was transitioning into his role here as well,” Abbee said.
She was able to continue working in communications even after being hired as an admission counselor by Hribar, the day after she graduated college. She was tasked with creating the department’s in-house designs and running a majority of its social media.
During the past year, she also worked for Adrian College’s Men’s NCAA Hockey team as a freelance content creator through her business, LLC Copper Mountain Media, and traveled with the Bulldogs to cover the national championships.
Abbee said since she’s been at Adrian College, the production house has had significant growth.
“Students are starting to flock to this area, which makes it a lot bigger in general,” she said. “When I first started there were about six student worker employees, and now, between interns, volunteers and actual staff employees, I think we have 35 to 40 now. That’s absolutely insane to see how much it grew in that aspect. So, my biggest goal is to figure out what the student’s needs and talents are, and utilize them to make us even bigger and better.”
Another aspiration of Abbee’s is to add more technology, including a media production truck. When she started, ACTV could only produce two live streams at a time. It has doubled that capability since then.
“Honestly, with our staff right now, if everyone was working on the same day, we could probably do four or five streams at the same time,” she said. “But, of course, we are always adding more teams, so we’ll need even more equipment. Having a production truck would make it easier for us to broadcast from remote locations, instead of having everything and everyone in the gymnasium or on the football field.”
Abbee has already began putting in the extra hours to add her own touches to the Media Production House and to finish her first major project, the annual Adrian College Athletics Year in Review video.
To keep an eye on Abbee and the Media Production House activities, visit ACTV’s channel on YouTube, or go online to adrian.edu.
