Auburn Alum and NBC Entertainment Correspondent, Chloe Melas, is Making News

Auburn Alum and NBC Entertainment Correspondent, Chloe Melas, is Making News

Alumni Stories, Auburn Magazine, Women of Auburn, Young Alumni

Auburn Alum and NBC Entertainment Correspondent, Chloe Melas, is Making News

A meeting at Auburn’s student-run television station launched Chloe Melas’ career as an entertainment news correspondent for VH1, CNN and NBC News.

By Shelley Wunder-Smith ’96

Female reporter in business attire.

If Chloe Melas’ name or face seems familiar, it’s likely because you’ve seen her reporting big entertainment news stories for CNN and CNN.com. Or now, as an entertainment correspondent for NBC News’ many platforms and programs such as “The Today Show” and “NBC Nightly News,” streaming on NBC News NOW, and with story bylines for NBCNews.com as well as MSNBC. While at CNN, Melas broke major stories about Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman related to the #MeToo movement; earlier this year, she was first to report criminal charges were being dropped against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting on his “Rust” movie set. In late 2023, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gave Melas a rare and exclusive interview in which he said he plans to give away most of his fortune during his lifetime.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Melas, with generosity and humor, describes how her mom secretly applied to Auburn for her and how Eagle Eye became her “place”; how cold calling a neighbor led to her first job; why she is passionate about journalism and breaking news, as well as why her current role at NBC News is her dream job.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Where are you from?
I was born in Atlanta and lived there until I was 10, and then my family moved to Dallas. I lived there until I went off to college. It’s hard for me to say where my hometown allegiances lie, so I usually claim both places.

How did you end up at Auburn?
My plan was to attend the University of Missouri because I had been accepted into their journalism program. I had visited Auburn and thought the campus was beautiful, but I had made up my mind about Missouri—it was journalism or nothing for me.

Then my mom said to me, “You know, you’re going to regret not going to school closer to home, now that we’re moving back to Atlanta.” She really kind of freaked me out! Turns out she had applied to Auburn for me, without me knowing about it, and I had been accepted. So in the middle of the summer I changed my mind and decided I would go to Auburn instead.

“Turns out, she had applied to Auburn for me, without me knowing about it, and I had been accepted. So in the middle of the summer I changed my mind and decided I would go to Auburn instead.”

When researching for our conversation, I read you initially felt out of place at Auburn, but when you joined Eagle Eye TV, you found your niche.
My sophomore year I started showing up at Eagle Eye [AU’s student-run TV station] meetings. At my first pitch meeting, I said I wanted to find the best barbecue in Auburn, and it was really an excuse to eat at different barbecue restaurants for free. [Laughs] So I took a camera and went all around and then I went to an edit bay at the library. A nice guy there helped me edit my pieces because I didn’t know how to use any of the programs. I did a lot of different features by myself, and I loved it.

Then I tried out for an anchor spot, and to my shock, I was chosen. That led to me anchoring the spring of my sophomore year and all through my junior and senior years.

How did you get your first job out of college?
I had interned the summer after my senior year with “The Colbert Report” and loved both it and living in New York City. I knew I wanted to stay but obviously had to have a job. I was applying for everything and wasn’t having any luck.

The way it eventually worked out was through a neighbor of my parents, whom I had never met: Gary Tuchman, a longtime reporter for CNN. My mom gave me the neighborhood directory and I left a message on his home phone—this was 2008—asking if he could connect me with anyone at CNN. He’s my mentor to this day, and he made some very kind introductions for me with a few journalists at CNN in New York.

I went in for an interview, and at the end of it, they told me there was no job. It was just an exploratory interview. I was heartbroken. This was around Thanksgiving and I was getting ready to go home. I would have to tell my parents I couldn’t get a job, so I couldn’t stay. But as I was boarding the plane, CNN called and said someone turned down a news assistant position—did I want it? Of course I did! I didn’t know how much it paid. I didn’t know the hours. I didn’t care.

What came after that?
I was at CNN for a year and then Bonnie Fuller, who had been the editor of Glamour, started a website called “Hollywood Life,” and she offered me a reporting job. I thought entertainment sounded fun, and lighter. Turns out it is fun but it’s not necessarily lighter.

My last two years at “Hollywood Life” I also hosted a weekday morning TV show on VH1 called “The Gossip Table.” There were five of us on it, all from different news outlets, and we talked about the news of the day and our scoops. It was a great experience, learning how to be on live television and putting a daily show together.

Two female reporters on the set of CNN.
Choe Melas on set with CNN national correspondent and news anchor Erica Hill in 2023.

Do you feel like that particularly prepared you for what you did at CNN and now at NBC?
It all adds up, everything you learn along the way. I first learned how to interview for my high school newspaper. And then in college at Auburn I learned what it took to go out with a camera and be a one-woman band. At CNN, I saw what’s required to be in a big newsroom. Then at “Hollywood Life” I learned how to cover events and build sources. I also learned how to write and report.

By that point I felt like I was doing more gossip and wanted to do harder entertainment news, and that’s what brought me back to CNN. I was there for seven years and that’s where I learned how to do investigative journalism.

I also saw how reporting can be impactful and can affect real, positive change. And that’s also where I got my field experience, covering things like the Britney Spears conservatorship case, Kobe Bryant’s funeral and the shooting incident on Alec Baldwin’s “Rust” set.

What do you find it worthwhile—and challenging—about entertainment reporting?
Look, it’s not specific to entertainment: I love journalism, I love breaking news and I love being first—and right. I care about getting the news out there, entertainment or otherwise. Of course I love pop culture but I am not a pop-culture junkie. I am a breaking-news junkie. So if you put me on another beat,
I’m pretty sure I could break news there. I landed in entertainment and here we are, 16 years later. I’ve had a wonderful time doing it and I’ve built incredible sources.

And in terms of challenging—there’s a new challenge every single day. This work is about building trust and getting people to feel comfortable talking to you, and showing your sources and your people that you are a trustworthy person who wants to get the facts out there.

What are you looking forward to with your role at NBC?
I’ve always wanted to work at NBC. I grew up watching “The Today Show” and “NBC Nightly News,” and walking into 30 Rock every day this week, coming to work with the journalists I’ve admired for so long, has been a dream come true. I’m excited to do great work here alongside my fellow journalists.

My actual role is entertainment correspondent, reporting across all platforms. So on any given day you might see me on MSNBC or on “Nightly News” or with a byline on NBCNews.com. It also depends on the news of the day—if there’s a massive story, like when I was reporting on Kevin Spacey in 2017, then I would be on-air throughout the day.

“I love Auburn so much, and I really hope that one of my boys goes to Auburn. I talk to them about it all the time.”
Why did you decide to give back financially to Auburn?
My family believes journalism is integral to the world and that good journalists are needed. We wanted to support the wonderful things Eagle Eye Studio is doing. It was a decision we made together, and we were excited to do it.

And now the studio has your name on it.

How fun is that? Maybe one of my children will go to Auburn and be part of Eagle Eye. That would be something.

Do you try to get back to Auburn every year?
Brian, my husband, loves SEC football. His biggest regret is that he did not go to school in the SEC. He’s a New Yorker, and he went to the University of Rhode Island. I’ve brought him down to games, and it’s always so much fun. This year we’ll be there for Homecoming. Brian hasn’t been to an Iron Bowl yet because it’s Thanksgiving, and he has a big Italian family, and they take Thanksgiving very seriously.

I love Auburn so much and I really hope that one of my boys goes to Auburn. I talk to them about it all the time. [Laughs] Maybe they’ll grow up and feel like they have no other option.

A mother and her two sons, dressed in winter attire, watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Chloe Melas at the 2022 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with kids Leo (left, age 5) and Luke (3).

A wife and husband in Auburn attire at a football game.
Chloe Melas tries to get back to the Plains as often as possible with her husband Brian Mazza.

Luck of the Draw

A woman sits at a table stacked with copies of a book.
Chloe Melas often heard her grandfather, Frank Murphy, talk about his WWII experience as a member of a heavy bomber crew in the “Mighty” Eighth Air Force. She didn’t really begin to understand the significance of what he went through until—studying abroad in London during college—she visited the northern England Air Force base from which Murphy flew his missions.

Murphy wrote about this, and about surviving a German POW camp after being shot out of his B-17 Flying Fortress, in “Luck of the Draw,” a book he self-published for his family in 2001.

Years later, Melas learned Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg were producing a TV show for Apple+ called “Masters of the Air,” based on the book of the same name, that will round out the WWII trilogy that includes “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.” Murphy will be a character in the show, and Hanks and Spielberg used “Luck of the Draw” as part of their research.

Melas said, “I told my mom and my grandmother—she’s still alive—‘We have to get the book published with a big publisher.’ I spearheaded our effort, a process that took three years. Ultimately St. Martin’s picked it up and released the book on February 28 of this year, and it became a New York Times bestseller.”

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Experience Auburn Scholarship Program

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Auburn Magazine, Campus, Philanthropy, Students

Experience Auburn Scholarship Program
Innovative program brings academically gifted prospective students to campus without the worry of costs.
By Kendra Carter ’08
black female and white male student standing side by side in a library with their backpacks on

Freshmen Na’kayla Hamlett and Phillip Hamilton inside the Mell Center Classroom. The two were part of a new program bringing students to Auburn for an immersive, personalized tour.

When Phillip Hamilton decided to apply to Auburn University to pursue his college dreams, he was in an unexpected place: Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Hamilton, now a freshman in computer science from Robertsdale, Ala., had traveled with friends to Tuscaloosa to attend his first football game. Amid the fanfare and atmosphere he realized he was ready for college. He had taken two gap years after high school to save as much money as possible and figure out what he wanted to study.

After he was accepted to Auburn, Hamilton was invited to visit campus through the Experience Auburn Program, which brings students with demonstrated financial need to the Plains for a full day of personalized meetings and tours to immerse them in the college atmosphere. Expenses for the day, including food and hotel costs, are covered by the program and students are given a $50 gift card at the end of the visit to reimburse their fuel expenses.

The idea for the program developed from an analysis of student enrollment data. Joffery Gaymon, Auburn’s vice president for enrollment management, noticed trends among prospective students who ultimately enrolled at the university and those who did not. The biggest factor? Whether or not the student made a trip to campus.

“There’s been a difference in the probability of a student who enrolled versus one who did not if they had the opportunity to visit Auburn.”
— Joffery Gaymon

“There’s been a difference in the probability of a student who enrolled versus one who did not if they had the opportunity to visit Auburn,” Gaymon said. “Additional data indicated that students who were Pell Grant eligible or had other demonstrated financial needs were either not coming to campus or were not able to visit until later in the admissions cycle.”

Understanding these realities, Gaymon aimed to take concepts from other “high touch,” personalized student recruitment programs—like those created for student-athletes and the university’s Presidential Scholars—and remove the financial barriers associated with making a campus visit. The cost of travel and lodging can be cost prohibitive for some students and their families, especially factoring in the initial cost of college applications and other fees, Gaymon said.

Hamilton knew he wanted to attend Auburn and major in computer science—Auburn was the only university he applied to after high school—but he said asking questions and getting the specifics of the costs, coupled with access to student resources available through the university and the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, made him sure that he was making the right decision for his future.

Making dreams a reality

Gaymon shared the idea for the program with Auburn’s Black Alumni Council in fall 2021, catching the attention of leaders in Auburn Advancement, the philanthropic fundraising arm of the university.

Just a few months later in February 2022, the Experience Auburn Program was one of the featured projects for Tiger Giving Day, the annual 24-hour digital fundraiser supporting initiatives across the university. Gaymon hoped to raise $15,000 to pilot the program quickly and the Auburn Family delivered, with 168 donors giving more than $28,000—almost double the initial goal.

“I’m thankful to each of the donors who supported Experience Auburn during Tiger Giving Day,” Gaymon said. “Their incredible response in helping make this idea a reality is truly what the Auburn Family represents—individuals uniting to create opportunities for future Auburn students.”

Beginning its third cycle in October 2023, the Experience Auburn Program is now hitting its stride. Prospective students participate by invitation, which is extended to high school juniors and seniors who have demonstrated financial need, are from a rural area or are first-generation college students.

“The students love it,” said Jan Miles, assistant director of the Personalized Visits Program that oversees the daily operations of Experience Auburn. “I’ve gotten an email from a participant who said it was the best day of her life. The prospective students really appreciate the personalized attention and getting to ride around on a golf cart on campus. It makes them feel really special.”

She said teams in departments across campus are eager to work with admissions as well because this is a way to collaboratively achieve a common goal: getting the brightest students to attend Auburn.

The program is also showing great results. In the first two admission cycles since the program began, 75 percent of students from the Experience Auburn Program have enrolled in the university.

Students like Na’kayla Hamlett, a freshman in pre-nursing from Birmingham. From personal experience, she knew she wanted to major in nursing so she could care for others. She also knew there were ideal organizations and resources in her college of choice: a chapter of the National Student Nurses’ Association, a Black Student Union and co-op opportunities for experiential learning.

Hamlett visited Auburn in summer 2022 through Tiger Takeoff, a student recruitment conference designed for rising high school seniors, but through Experience Auburn, she was able to see all the resources that would be available to her as a student.

“Having Jan talking with me one-on-one and setting up the visit for me really made me feel welcome on campus,” she said. “During the trip, I understood that Auburn had all the parts I was looking for in college, plus the valuable resources the university provides to help students succeed and faculty who are invested in helping students achieve their goals.”

View of Samford Hall clock tower from Samford Lawn.

So what does an Experience Auburn visit look like?

“We take each student on a walking tour of campus, then we transport them to meetings tailored to their personal interests and situations,” Miles said. “We communicate with the students throughout the admissions process, so when they’re invited to Experience Auburn, we have a good sense of how we should plan any individual student’s visit so they get all the information they need to decide if the university is the best fit for them.”

Miles said the day begins with a quick check-in at the Quad Center about the schedule, questions about the admissions process and scholarships. From there, participants go on a walking tour of campus with a student recruiter, visit campus housing and then take a personalized tour of the college that most interests them.

A student recruiter then joins the participant for lunch on campus before they head back to their college for a meeting with recruiting leaders who talk more in-depth about the major the prospective student is interested in. They even get into the details of the curriculum, internship/co-op experiences and career opportunities for graduates.

The day rounds out with a tour of the Auburn Recreation Center and a trip back to Quad Center, where the admissions team recaps the day.

“At the end of the day, the Experience Auburn student typically meets with our Enrollment Engagement Coordinator Katie Morgan, who goes over their personal information, scholarships and other details to give them an actual figure of what it will cost to attend Auburn,” Miles said. “Providing a specific figure and discussing options for them is helpful when they’re deciding if Auburn is the best fit.”

Make a gift to the Experience Auburn Program

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Auburn alum spends 40 years convicting Columbus Stocking Strangler

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Alumni Stories, Auburn Magazine

Auburn alum spends 40 years convicting Columbus Stocking Strangler

It took Bill Smith ’64 more than 40 years to bring one of Georgia’s worst serial killers to justice. Now at the end of the saga, Smith reflects on the case that defined his career.

By Catherine Haynes

Main focuses in video is on the trial

In 1960, when Bill Smith met Louise Chambers during his freshman year at Auburn, he sensed they would spend the rest of their lives together.

He had no idea that the Columbus Stocking Strangler—a serial killer who ravaged Columbus, Ga. from September 1977 to April 1978 and took more than 40 years to bring to justice—would play such a big role in their lives.

When Smith was a freshman, Auburn had a partnership with Tulane University where students could complete three years at Auburn and then attend law school in New Orleans. In 1963, he received a full-ride scholarship, the only one awarded that year. Louise joined him in New Orleans the next year, and the two were married and moved to Quantico, Va. when he joined the FBI.

“I had a three-year commitment with them, and when that was up, I wanted to go back home and practice law. That was what I was trained to do,” said Smith. “And I wanted to come to some Auburn games.”

They moved back to Columbus in 1970, and Smith joined the district attorney’s office in the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit. He was the chief assistant until a vacancy opened in 1978 and Gov. George Busby appointed him district attorney.

His position was made official on Jan. 4, 1978—only a week after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) formed a task force to solve the case of the Columbus Stocking Strangler.

Five murders had occurred within three months. Two more murders and many other break-ins would follow. Without knowing, Smith had stepped into his new role and taken on the biggest case of his life, all in the same week.

The case changed everything, for both Columbus and the Smith family. The city’s gun and lock sales skyrocketed. Smith’s mother, who had come to stay with him for a few nights after a murder occurred down the road from her house, ended up living with him for two years.

Man in a suit standing in a court room in front of a map
Man in a suit in a courtroom pointing his finger at the suspect who is sitting at a table in front of him

Bill Smith at the murder trial of Carlton Gary in 1986.

Smith’s role in the hunt for the Stocking Strangler consisted of authorizing search warrants, discussing suspects and answering questions for the GBI. His job got even harder when 78-year-old Mildred Borom became the Strangler’s sixth victim in February 1978. “It was a very stressful time—a trying time—in Columbus,” recalled Smith. “Everybody just expected another [attack]. We had seven murders in about eight months and all kinds of other break-ins and attempts, and everybody just expected that the next one would occur next month or the next.”

In April 1978, 61-year-old Janet Cofer became the Stocking Strangler’s final victim. As time passed, the citizens of Columbus began working toward healing and justice.

But for Smith, the next five years would be saturated with countless false suspects and leads. The city wouldn’t see a glimpse of closure until 1984, when a stolen .22 caliber Ruger semiautomatic pistol would lead them to Carlton Gary, the suspect they would spend the next 32 years prosecuting.

“It dominated my life. From the time of the commission of the crimes until the time of the execution, it was 40 years.”

Those 40 years consisted of false starts and trials. From having a separate trial to confirm Gary’s mental ability to understand the charges against him, to the defense motioning for a change of venue due to the case’s publicity, the case dragged on. There were countless appeals, and complications with evidence at the GBI Crime Laboratory. But the verdict stood.

“The case was never reversed in those 32 years, [even] with everything that was thrown at it—the kitchen sink. I calculated one time [that] 56 different judges heard it.”

It wasn’t until 2018 that the state of Georgia executed Gary and Smith could finally talk about the case publicly. Since then, one of the ways he has gained closure is through William Rawlings’s book “The Columbus Stocking Strangler,” published in 2022.

“The book is about the case. It’s not about me,” said Smith. “The case doesn’t need any embellishment. It speaks for itself. I’m just so glad it was written.”

Now retired, Judge Smith is free to enjoy one of his favorite pastimes—Auburn football. A tried-and-true fan, he was recognized in 2014 at the San Jose State game for attending 500 Auburn football games.

“I went to my first game at age 6 in 1948 because they played the Georgia-Auburn game in Columbus at that time, and I kept on going. I went to many games before I came to Auburn and just about all of them when I was here. It’s been my hobby and my love.”

Smith says he couldn’t have made it through the Columbus Stocking Strangler case—in addition to the other cases he was a part of through 40 years—without Louise, his family and Auburn football.

“People ask, ‘How’d you do it?’ Well, it was just my job,” he said

Watch Bill Smith share is Auburn experience

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How Auburn’s Modern Art Collection Helped Found A Museum

How Auburn’s Modern Art Collection Helped Found A Museum

Auburn History, Auburn Magazine, Campus, Students

How Auburn’s Modern Art Collection Helped Found A Museum

A Georgia O’Keeffe for 50 bucks? The unbelievable saga of how Auburn purchased 36 controversial masterpieces and opened a world-class art museum for the 21st century.

By Charlotte Hendrix

A man and woman looking at a painting in an art gallery.

In the Auburn Veterans Affairs Office at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, war surplus agent Dorsey Barron sipped his second cup of coffee and stared at his afternoon stack of bid forms. Just where on Earth are we supposed to put ’em all? By June 1948, Auburn had found itself in a GI Bill-fueled enrollment boom. More than 8,000 students. New faculty and staff arriving every year. And Barron had to find a place to put them all.

President Ralph B. Draughon had a huge list for Barron and even bigger aspirations (with a not-as-big budget from Treasurer William Ingraham). So, when it came to housing, war surplus auctions helped the bottom line, with items like tugboat cabins making fine lodging for ex-servicemen turned Plainsmen.

He grabbed an accordion file of new announcements from the War Assets Administration. Let’s see else what Uncle Sam has for me today. Trucks maybe? Electric tubes? No. Industrial manufacturing…oil paintings?

Barron scanned an unusual offering. Sales Announcement WAX-5025, Catalog of 117 Oil and Watercolor Originals by Leading American Artists. The government was selling paintings in the war surplus? The forward read that a major national magazine ranked 10 of the artists in the collection as the best painters working in the U.S. Barron knew a bargain when he saw one, but he didn’t follow art trends. Fortunately, Auburn had a School of Art and Architecture. Barron snatched up the telephone and made a call that would change Auburn history.

Art Professor Frank Applebee ’30 gently placed the receiver on the hook. Pausing for a beat, he envisioned what this could mean for Auburn. A painter himself, he knew the artists’ cultural significance and why the government had included this lot as surplus. Things had started unraveling for the “Advancing American Art” exhibit on the national and international stage almost two years prior. He fed a sheet of paper into his typewriter and tapped out his request—Attention President Draughon.

Dorsey Barron’s curiosity and Frank Applebee’s insistence set into motion a series of events that landed Auburn a world-renowned art collection described as one of the finest collections of early 20th-century art in the South. One that would be the envy of universities across the country and lead to the building of a world-class museum at Auburn.

Was it by chance that Barron happened upon the listing? Or destiny?

A Most Unlikely Weapon

World War II may have ended, but not the contest against Communism with art as an unlikely weapon. In 1946, the U.S. State Department began organizing touring exhibitions from corporate collections to promote the country’s overall innovation under the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs, or OIC. Touring artistic output also meant that vulnerable citizens in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia could witness the creative freedom of expression enjoyed in a democracy. This young nation would also disprove notions of a cultural wasteland status.

With audiences clamoring for more examples of progressive American art, the OIC hired J. LeRoy Davidson, a former assistant curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as a visual arts specialist. In the spring of that year, Davidson quickly assembled 117 paintings for a multi-country tour titled “Advancing American Art.” Gallerists demonstrated proof of concept in the idea by selling the works at reduced rates.

Exhibitions often examine art trends with a rearview mirror. Still, Davidson’s survey featured a range of established and cutting-edge artists: John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Walt Kuhn and Max Weber—described by Davidson as the “older generation”—alongside emerging artists like Ben Shahn, Stuart Davis and Yasuo Kuniyoshi and the next generation, with the likes of Romare Bearden, Robert Gwathmey and Jacob Lawrence. The exhibition premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 1946 to accolades by the New York press, prompting Art News Editor Alfred M. Frankfurter to claim that “Advancing American Art” set out for a blind date with destiny, showing the world’s cultural elite that this export was no imitation but truly original and uniquely American. One grouping headed for Paris and Prague and the other to Havana and Port-au-Prince—equally celebrated abroad.

The campaign on the home front did not go well at all. Conservative papers blasted the “Red Art,” given some artists’ progressive politics. Styles and subjects, like Ben Shahn’s “Hunger,” came under fire. Almost to scale, the young boy in the painting, with dark eyes and sunken cheeks, reaches out to the viewer in desperation. These images, the opposition argued, presented as un-American, as did the foreign-sounding names of many immigrant artists. Others thought it was just “junk.”

A painting of a dark-haired woman seated in a velvet chair.

Circus Girl Resting (1925)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi

A painting of a hill beneath a cloudy blue sky.

Small Hills Near Alcade (1930)
Georgia O’Keeffe

Your Money Bought These Paintings
The big blow came in February 1947, when LOOK Magazine ran a feature titled “Your Money Bought These Paintings,” with reproductions of Shahn’s “Hunger” and Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s “Circus Girl Resting.” The article emphasized Davidson’s misstep: instead of costly loans, his office purchased them outright to exhibit them later in government spaces. LOOK editors prophesized that the exhibition “will never be shown in America.”

Davidson’s sustainable rationale did not satisfy the American taxpayer egged on by the sensationalistic press or Congress on the receiving end of angry letters. With a formal investigation, looming funding cuts and colorful criticism from President Harry S. Truman, Secretary of State George C. Marshall canceled the tour in May 1947, with the lot categorized as war surplus set for auction in June 1948. Ironically, many of the works had significantly increased in value by then.

Applebee’s Appeal
Only Ivy League schools and much larger state universities held substantial collections with attached museums by the mid-20th century. But as Professor Applebee hoped, this auction could change things for Alabama Polytechnic, which would receive a 95 percent discount as a higher education institution with a large veteran population.

Applebee lobbied Samford Hall and appealed to acting president Ralph B. Draughon, who wrote to Alabama congressional leaders and other government contacts, none of whom seemed turned off by the political fray. In response, the state’s longest-serving senator, John Sparkman, made his desire known for Auburn to get the paintings. He provided considerable detail on navigating the bureaucracy. “I am eager to do anything to help Auburn get the paintings,” he wrote Draughon. These friends in high places advised listing fair value on the plentiful forms, noting that private purchasers would not bid that high, and clearing the path for higher education.

So, with all the national flack about taxpayer dollars paying for art, where did the money come from in lean times? Legend has it that the School of Art and Architecture faculty sacrificed their yearly salary raise that year, provided the university matched the funds. This noble act reinforced Draughon’s belief in the collection’s validity and educational value.

A man in the 1940s wearing a suit, coat, and hat.
In 1948, Auburn art professor and artist Frank Applebee asked Auburn President Ralph B. Draughon to bid on a collection of 117 modern American paintings.
The Beautiful Bargain
Auburn submitted individual blind bids for all 117 paintings at fair value—a gamble for what the university would get. As one of the few to do so and follow the protocol correctly, Auburn initially won 34, with two more acquired when other bidders were disqualified. With the discount, the bill came to $1,072. Only Oklahoma University followed a similar playbook and was awarded 36 paintings. The University of Georgia acquired 10. The remainder were scattered to smaller museums and high schools.

Looking again through the lens of history, Auburn’s set included many of the most highly prized modernists: Arthur Dove ($30), Georgia O’Keeffe ($50), John Marin ($100), Ben Shahn ($60), Romare Bearden ($6.25), Jacob Lawrence ($13.93) and Yasuo Kuniyoshi ($100). “I am amazed that we have been so successful,” said Applebee.

“This is significant not only for you but for all of Alabama.”

Less than a year after its death roll of an article, LOOK Magazine released a 1948 poll to select the ten best painters in the U.S. Critics, gallerists and museum directors gave the most votes to five artists from “Advancing American Art”: Marin, Davis, Kuniyoshi, Shahn and Weber—all of whose paintings Auburn had acquired.

Throughout the summer of 1948, The Auburn Plainsman ran pieces on the purchase, even running a political cartoon of a nervous Professor Applebee watching as Draughon, Barron, Ingraham and Dean Turpin C. Bannister contorted to make sense of modern art. The student newspaper reprinted congratulatory notes from state legislators and the head of Alabama’s art department. “This is significant not only for you but for all of Alabama,” wrote the art department chair, Dr. J.B. Smith. “I am frankly envious.”

Newspaper clipping of a political cartoon.
Just Plain Flabbergasted
While several articles teased a showing at Auburn that fall, The Birmingham News posed the question “Is it Art or Red Propaganda” in its coverage of the sole 1949 exhibition at the Birmingham Public Library. Visitors are described as “sneering, leering…and just plain flabbergasted,” with some “real art students” who view them as paintings. “Some like ‘em, some don’t,” wrote Walling Keith.

But like most national news cycles, political scandals found new heroes and villains. Careers recovered. Life on the Plains moved on, as did higher priorities for funding. So, Auburn had what Professor Applebee described to the Lee County Bulletin as “a contemporary painting collection that probably will not be surpassed by that of any other school in the nation. Our present students and all others of the future will benefit.”

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the art department displayed some works in campus offices and administrative buildings. While a proposed gallery space in the Langdon Hall Annex failed to gain financial traction, museum records indicate that “An Exhibition of British and American Paintings” went on view at the [Foy] Union Gallery in April 1976 and featured some of the paintings. Because of increasing value and deteriorating condition, the department stored the work centrally out of sight until 1979, when the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts came to the rescue with a grant for sorely needed conservation, and organized a national tour, including a major survey at the Smithsonian. An extended loan to Montgomery until the turn of the next century bought Auburn time.

The national attention given to Montgomery’s touring exhibition of “Advancing American Art” in 1984 reinforced the need to safeguard the investment. Enter Brewton philanthropist Susan Phillips in 1992. She gifted one of the Southeast’s largest John James Audubon print collections. The Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection included 120 prints of the Birds of America and Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. Her grandparents had long desired to keep the collection in the state so citizens could access the delicate works on paper.

Making of a Museum
Moreover, Phillips and her brother, Allen Phillips, established gallery construction and conservation funds. This push gave just enough momentum to the museum project. The Audubon collection gained additional cachet when it was paired with a European art collection that included works by Chagall, Dali, Picasso and Renoir, a gift from Bill L. Harbert ’48. With transformational funds from the Fuller E. Callaway Foundation, Albert J. Smith Jr. ’47 and Jule Collins Smith ’99, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art opened at last in 2003.

During the inaugural year, curators exhibited the 36 paintings as originally intended, with subsequent viewings and loans to major museums in later years. In 2013, the three institutions that successfully bid—Auburn, Oklahoma and Georgia—reunited 109 of the original 117 works for the first time in over half a century as the touring exhibition “Art Interrupted: Advancing American Art and the Politics of Cultural Diplomacy.” The absent works are lost to the ages. Nevertheless, practicum exhibitions have featured some of the greatest hits as students learn the science of exhibition curation and design. Curators will exhibit selections from the founding collection during the fall 2023 semester to commemorate the 20th anniversary, including Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Small Hills Near Alcalde.”

From infamy to acclaim. From obscurity to the spotlight. By striking out at the opportunity presented, Dorsey Barron and these 36 paintings changed the course of American history—and Auburn’s. Even today, “all others of the future will benefit” from the swift action and measured persistence of the Auburn faithful to build a university art collection and a museum to entrust with its conservation.

Professor Applebee’s words were prophetic. The growing archive contributes to the university’s intellectual and civic life while advancing American art under the same guiding principle. Auburn’s museum is among the few accredited by the American Alliance of Museums—and the only accredited university art museum in the state.

The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art observes 20 years of service to the state in 2023. Daily visitors from pre-k to lifelong learners wonder at Dale Chihuly’s massive “Amber Luster Chandelier,” a gift from the John F. Hughes ’50 family. Professors and students reflect and explore together in museum spaces—whether looking closely at selections in the Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Study Room or touring a major exhibition with student guides whose majors range from education to computer science. Beyond studio art, investigating objects enhances educational pursuits in architecture, consumer and design sciences, creative writing, curriculum and teaching, history and philosophy. Published reproductions and collection loans to premier institutions carry forth the Auburn brand.

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Why Auburn Grads Are Hired By ESPN

Why Auburn Grads Are Hired By ESPN

Alumni Stories, Athletics, Auburn Magazine, Students, Young Alumni

Why Auburn Grads Are Hired By ESPN

When ESPN needs talent in the production room or in front of the camera, it turns to Auburn.

By Shelley Wunder-Smith ’96

Staff working in War Eagle Productions control room during game
When you watch an ESPN program—whether a soccer game or a show like SportsNation—there’s a good chance an Auburn grad is working behind the scenes to help make your viewing experience a seamless one. For about a decade, a steady stream of alumni have made their way to the sports network, primarily in off-camera technical roles that keepESPN’s thousands of hours of content moving.

These postgraduate placements are not accidental. Students interested in sports journalism and sports broadcasting careers have ample access to real-world, hands-on training at Auburn—training that prepares them to step directly into professional roles at networks such as ESPN without any ramp-up.

This experiential preparation comes through Eagle Eye, the student-run TV station; WEGL, the student-operated FM-radio station; and especially through War Eagle Productions, which annually produces more than 350 live events for ESPN, the SEC Network and the Auburn Athletics Department.

Inside the War Eagle Productions studio, the director, producer and technical director oversee all aspects of a broadcast as it happens live. With views of every camera angle, instant replay streams and in-the-moment graphics, they are able to produce professional-quality coverage the moment that it happens. Red-rimmed video boxes are currently live, while green boxes indicate which will go next.
The Beginning of War Eagle Productions
In May 2013, ESPN announced the formation of the SEC Network in partnership with the Southeastern Conference’s 14 schools. The agreement included the production and broadcast of hundreds of sports events, studio shows like SEC Nation and original content, with production facilities on every campus.

At Auburn, athletics video services were largely being handled externally through Daktronics, IMG and AUHD. With the high levels of content and production demanded by the SEC Network contract, Auburn saw the opportunity to bring these groups together in-house—and so War Eagle Productions was born.

“Given the volume of events we were covering, we had to get students involved immediately to be successful,” recalled Andy Young, who was brought in as assistant athletic director of video to get the new production unit up and running. Young came from the University of Illinois, where he helped get the Big Ten Network off the ground.

“The success of our program meant having a strong student staff essentially operating as an extension of our full-time staff. We had an amazing initial group of students that were already in place when the SEC Network and War Eagle Productions launched. Auburn had been working with several groups for years to deliver its video needs and several students came over from those groups,” he said.

Michael Sullivan ’14 was one of those students. Throughout college, he worked with Daktronics on the video boards—such as the jumbotron at Jordan-Hare—for football and basketball games. Hoping to make a career out of his interest in video production, Sullivan double-majored in business and radio, television and film.

The arrival of the SEC Network was perfectly timed.

Sullivan, now an ESPN managing director in Charlotte, N.C., explained, “Andy hired me first as a student, and then after I graduated he kept me on as director of live operations to provide oversight for all our SEC Network broadcasts. We were a tag team—he dealt with the postproduction stuff, I managed most of the live events, and together we helped build the organization.”

Student with headphones on speaking into microphone in WEGL studio
A Strengthening Relationship
ESPN saw its partnership with the 14 SEC institutions as an opportunity to build its eventual workforce, and Auburn certainly recognized that as well.

“When the SEC Network started, one of the goals for both the schools and ESPN was training students to be future production personnel. War Eagle Productions is a teaching lab,” said Parker Leppien, director of live operations and programming. “The best way for the students to learn is to get in there and get exposure to all the different components to making a show. It’s to get in there on the machines and learn them. It’s a safe place to make mistakes.”

Trust between ESPN and War Eagle Productions quickly grew as the network realized Auburn could be relied on for excellent broadcasts. Young noted in 2017 that ESPN rarely sent its own production trucks to Auburn events because they knew Auburn would “produce these events at such a high level.”

“The best way for the students to learn is to get in there and get exposure to all the different components to making a show…”

By 2016, ESPN and the SEC Network had already hired four Auburn students who had experience working at War Eagle Productions—and that was just the beginning.

Like many of her fellow students, Delaney Baro ’21 worked at Eagle Eye TV and War Eagle Productions in multiple roles. At the latter, she served as associate director, replay operator, stage manager and grip/utility.

“Going into college, I knew I wanted to work in sports and tell those stories, and that’s how I ended up in sports broadcasting,” Baro said. “At Auburn, there was the opportunity for production behind the scenes, as well as on camera, and I could do a little bit of everything. When I was graduating and applying for jobs at ESPN, there were a lot of connections there through War Eagle Productions, which was great, and they also really liked my experience.”

ESPN hired Baro as a production assistant to work on SportsCenter and the ACC Network. She eventually moved to live events, producing content for NCAA lacrosse games. This summer, Baro began working on Premier Lacrosse League events.

Jovan Cutler headshot

Jovan Cutler ’20
ESPN Radio Production Assistant

“I fell in love with radio because of the freedom of it—what you say, how you say it, and even what you wear. TV is more buttoned up,” said Jovan Cutler. “With television, you follow a script and a teleprompter, but with radio, you can follow an idea. So my junior year at Auburn, I switched from Eagle Eye to WEGL Radio.”

Cutler liked that WEGL encourages students to create radio shows that correspond with their interests. Together with a friend, Cutler developed The End Zone, a weekly talk show focused on sports happenings at Auburn and nationally. He also provided play-by-play and color analysis for Auburn’s softball, soccer and volleyball games.

After graduating, Cutler stayed in Auburn as a full-time DJ and board operator at Tiger Communications. He joined ESPN Radio as a production assistant in April 2022. One of his responsibilities as a PA is compiling game highlights for use in ESPN radio shows.

“It’s cool to hear your highlight being played on air because it’s a national highlight,” Cutler said. “It’s not something only people in New York or Connecticut are hearing—the whole country is going to hear this highlight I’ve cut. So it’s gratifying that while I’m doing something I love, I’m also creating content for everyone to enjoy.”

Ashley Ward headshot

Ashley Ward ’16
ESPN Director

Promoted at the age of 26, Ashley Ward is believed to be ESPN’s youngest-ever director.

Previously, ESPN’s youngest director had been 27, and when Ward arrived at the network after graduation, she made no secret of her ambition to beat that record.

“Once I’d been there a few months, I went to my manager and told him I wanted to be the youngest, and then I also told every other manager in my department I had that goal,” Ward said. “They laughed a little—not in a mean way—and said it wouldn’t be easy to accomplish in that timeframe, but they would help me try to get there.”

Ward was undeterred. As an Auburn student, she had worked hard preparing for her professional career, spending nearly three years as a photographer for the SEC, managing video boards with War Eagle Productions and interning with ESPN.

After being hired full time, Ward spent four years climbing the ranks as an associate director for a mix of the network’s live events and studio shows. She enjoys “the adrenaline rush of having to get live shows right the first time” as she works on college football, softball and basketball games and studio shows like SportsCenter and Daily Wager.

Ward’s efforts haven’t just paid off in terms of her record-breaking promotion to director. She is also an Emmy award-winner (in 2021, for contributions on SportsCenter) and part of Forbes’ 2023 30 Under 30 (Sports)—just to name a few of this Auburn alumna’s major accomplishments.

Taylor Davis headshot

Taylor Davis ’14
ESPN Sideline Reporter

“I knew early on that I wanted a career in sports journalism and to eventually be on camera. That was very clear for me. But the way in which it all came about was certainly not what I expected.”

That’s Taylor Davis reflecting on how her career as a reporter for ESPN came to be.

On-camera opportunities are few and far between. In June 2014, when she was about to graduate from Auburn, Davis was offered an on-camera role for a local TV station. ESPN had also made her a job offer, but she would be working behind the camera as a production assistant.

Thinking about what she could learn as a PA—and as an act of faith—Davis took the ESPN job.

“I spent four years in that role learning from our producers, directors and writers. And learning the business side from the worldwide leader in sports,” she said. “It was a priceless experience, and it has made me a much more versatile reporter.”

Davis was gradually given chances to be in front of the camera—“unofficial auditions,” she said—that included the College World Series. By 2018, she had made the transition to an on-camera reporter. These days, you can see Davis in her dream job: on the sidelines of college gymnastics meets, XFL games and college football games—including her beloved Auburn Tigers.

“Taking the initiative and going for it—the worst thing someone can say is no. I learned that at Auburn, and that has shown up over and over in my career,” Davis concluded.

Héctor Rios-Morales ’19
former ESPN Sports Content Researcher

While studying journalism at Auburn, Héctor Rios-Morales worked as a media relations intern in Auburn’s Athletic Department.

“I did a little bit of everything there,” he said. “PR, updating record books and media guides, going to sporting events, whatever the sports information directors needed. And that opened the doors for me to work for the SEC at the 2017 SEC Football Championship in Atlanta and then the SEC Basketball Championship in Nashville—very cool opportunities.”

Rios-Morales credits these experiences with enabling him to get an internship at ESPN headquarters in the Stats and Information Department, where he helped cover the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The network eventually hired him as a bilingual sports content researcher, a role he held for nearly three years.

“ESPN has a tool to help you get information for everything,” Rios-Morales explained. “There are huge spreadsheets and databases that we used to find facts and figures about games and players. The hardest part is not knowing what will happen during a live game and needing to react in the moment—you always have to stay on your toes during a sporting event.”

Rios-Morales is now a technical producer at a local TV station in Huntsville, Ala. But what he would really like to do is return to Auburn and work at the university, possibly in the athletic department.

“I’m keeping my eyes out for an opening there,” he said.

Stephone Sheffield ’19
ESPN Media Op

Stephone Sheffield went through the interview process twice with ESPN before he was hired.

He admits he thought he would get the job offer the first time, but the network decided to go with someone who had more experience.

As a sports journalism major at Auburn, Sheffield was a regular sports analyst for Eagle Eye TV and put in long hours at War Eagle Productions. After his first round of ESPN interviews, he went back to War Eagle Productions and put in more long hours. When the pandemic shut everything down, he worked for a while at an Amazon warehouse. He returned to War Eagle Productions for the SEC 2020 football season opener: Auburn versus Kentucky at home.

In 2021—two years after that first interview series—Sheffield found himself in front of the same group of people at ESPN. They asked him how he handled the initial rejection.

“I put myself in the position where I’m the most qualified person you’re going to find at this point,” he told them. “If you don’t hire me, you won’t be hiring the most qualified person.”

ESPN hired him.

Sheffield soon realized how quickly things move at the network. “If I had been hired in 2019, I would have been playing catch-up from day one. So I really wasn’t ready the first time around,” he reflected. He is grateful for the two extra years of experience.

A Unique Major
To complement the hands-on training available to students through War Eagle Productions, Auburn’s School of Communication and Journalism added several classes: introductory and advanced courses in sports productions, control room operation and cinematography and storytelling.

“These classes helped make us even more competitive as a program among the other SEC schools,” said Journalism Professor Emeritus John Carvalho. “And then we realized we could offer a major—the first of its kind in the SEC.”

In 2020, Auburn began offering a sports production major, unique among SEC schools and one of very few majors like it in the U.S. Class enrollment is capped at 20 students, so they receive close oversight from instructors. Topics include live sports producing, sports media management and news and sports announcing, among others.

“The major gives students both the theoretical basics and the terminology they need, as well as the hands-on experience. I really push them to go get relevant jobs on campus, since there are so many opportunities,” said Young, who now is a lecturer in the School of Communication and Journalism. “A lot of our students, by the time they graduate, have had three or four years of working in the field. If they do that, they’re going to be so
much more employable right out of college.”

“The major gives students both the theoretical basics and the terminology they need, as well as the hands-on experience. I really push them to go get relevant jobs on campus, since there are so many opportunities”

What began as a trickle with those first four Auburn alums hired by ESPN has since become a steady flow with students headed to the network—as well as to other networks like Turner and CBS and to athletic teams’ own in-house production departments—every year after graduation.

Leppien encourages his students not to take this seemingly dependable success for granted.

“I know our group has been given opportunities other schools have not because of the quality of our work,” he said. “And I tell the students all the time, ‘OK, you’ve gotten to this level, and the reputation of this group is what it is because of the people who came before you and what they’ve done professionally,’” he said. “This group is highly regarded because of that, and it’s our responsibility to uphold and continue that reputation for the people who will come behind you.”

Where students elsewhere might reasonably consider their work in school as a kind of professional preproduction, Auburn’s history of student-oriented, hands-on, can-do broadcasting has meant that journalism majors are doing the real work now. As they step directly into careers at ESPN, all they need is a bit of professional polish. Which is to say: they clean it up in post.

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Revolutionizing The Way American Eels Are Grown

Revolutionizing The Way American Eels Are Grown

Alumni Stories, Auburn Magazine, Women of Auburn

Revolutionizing The Way American Eels Are Grown

Fried, smoked or even an “ELT,” Sara Rademaker ’07 wants you to eat more eel.

By Derek Herscovici ’14

Woman holding an eel in both of her hands
Orange bucket full of wet eels being poured out

No one knows where they come from. For as long as humans have known them, the whereabouts of their origins in the seaweed-laden Sargasso Sea are a mystery that even today eludes modern science.

From these enigmatic origins, eels—yes, eels—have become one of the most sought-after foods on the planet, and big business for Sara Rademaker ’07.

Rademaker, the president and founder of American Unagi, is redefining our relationship with the slippery beasts by revolutionizing the way American eels are grown, processed and distributed in the U.S.

“A lot of the sushi that you’re eating, you don’t know where that originally came from,” said Rademaker. “You don’t know if it’s from a regulated fishery or a black-market suitcase deal. When I first got into eels, I was hesitant because of the notoriety. But I also saw an opportunity to create an accountable product. By having a direct connection with the fishermen and growing it locally, we’re producing a product that has traceability and accountability unlike any eel in the world.”

Eels have a long history in cultural and culinary traditions around the world and remain one of the most popular global seafoods. At $2,000 a pound, they’re also one of the most lucrative. In 2019, 280,000 tons of freshwater eels were sold. The U.S. imports roughly 11 million pounds of eel a year, most of which goes to the sushi industry. But the animal’s popularity has made it critically endangered, leading to restrictions on how they’re caught.

That hasn’t stopped criminal organizations from poaching eels—in 2022, European authorities intercepted $2 million in illegal eel destined for international markets—but even legally, it’s a circuitous process. After being harvested in the Atlantic, the eels are shipped to China, which has more than 87% of the world’s eel farms. Once they are fully grown and processed, the eel filets are resold in North America for consumption.

“By having a direct connection with the fishermen and growing it locally, we’re producing a product that has traceability and accountability unlike any eel in the world.”
As a fisheries and allied aquaculture pre-vet graduate, with experience managing a USAID aquaculture project in Uganda and as an assistant hatchery manager for Tropo Farms in Ghana, Rademaker knew there had to be a better way. While living in Maine, a strong aquaculture state and one of only two U.S. states where eel farming is legal, she recognized the opportunity to develop a new process.

“Eels are really great for aquaculture because they are extremely tolerant of a wide variety of conditions. They also like to grow in high densities, and they’re more widely eaten in terms of marketing and marketability than a lot of fish,” said Rademaker. “Nearly every culture has a relationship with eels, and because of that, there are a lot more opportunities for a market like the U.S., where you’ve got people from all over the world who want to eat eel.”

Rademaker began American Unagi—Japanese for “eel”—in 2014 with a tank in her basement and plans to connect Maine’s fishery with larger scaled farming. Then she started connecting the pieces—land-based aquaculture equipment from Europe, technology from Japan to filet the eels and advanced machinery to smoke them for distribution.

Raising finances was a challenge in the beginning for Rademaker, but in January 2023, American Unagi completed the construction of a $10 million, 27,000-square-foot facility, expanding production to more than 500,000 pounds a year.

“From the very beginning I asked, ‘does anybody really care about a wild eel or a locally produced eel?’ And one thing I noticed right away was that customers want a consistent, quality product they can trust.”

Rademaker had no idea how good eel could be until chefs started cooking with it. Chefs all over the U.S. are praising American Unagi’s products, and in turn the company helps restaurants replace their eels with fresh, sustainable ones.

American Unagi has been good to Maine as well. Partnerships with local fishermen provide steady business for local communities, and a new sort of pride has emerged around the slippery fish.

“Getting to see folks’ reaction to our products and getting our eels into the hands of new chefs has always been great,” said Rademaker. “I oftentimes get really great feedback from chefs, and I always share it with my entire team because that’s the stuff that drives us. What we’re doing is producing great products and a great fish, and seeing people turn that fish into just these amazing dishes that are being shared across tables all over the U.S. is unbelievably satisfying.”

An eel filet dish with rice and sushi nori seaweed.

Eels Rademaker: A fish served two ways

The “Eel Queen of Maine” shares her favorite personal recipes. When smoked, eel tastes more like bacon than fish. “They’re like little sausages,” said Rademaker. “We always joke about using our smoked eel instead of bacon on a BLT and calling it an ‘ELT.’”

Charcuterie Style
Use an American Unagi smoked filet as the centerpiece and pair it with your favorite snacks and hors d’oeuvres.

Bachan Unagi on Ramen

  • 1 American Unagi smoked filet
  • Bachan sauce (like Japanese BBQ sauce)
  • 1 package Nongshim spicy Shin Ramen
  1. Cover smoked eel filet with Bachan sauce
  2. Bake filet in oven 5-10 minutes at 350 degrees
  3. Boil ramen until al dente and drain
  4. Place baked eel filet on ramen

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