Todd Delaney

A Servant's Heart

It’s well known that a good, caring teacher can mold a student’s future. For Todd Delaney, KSLU Radio’s general manager and program director, the influence of a teacher at McKinley Middle Magnet School in Baton Rouge set him on course for a successful career in broadcasting.

The winner of the 2017 President’s Award for Excellence in Unclassified Staff Service, Delaney enrolled in a radio class in the seventh grade.  At the end of the year, his teacher noted in his yearbook that he had a lovely voice and should consider a career in radio.

As they say, the rest is history.

Delaney later attended Baton Rouge High specifically because they had a radio station. There he began working earnestly on his radio career. After high school, he attended LSU and graduated with a degree in general studies in 2000. He began working for Southeastern at KSLU in 2001, and earned his master’s degree in organizational communication from Southeastern in 2006.

When he began working for KSLU, he noticed the lack of a training program for students.

"Seeing the need for a formal training program, I wrote the KSLU Training Manual and created video tutorials to accompany it, bringing students up to speed quickly and at their own pace,” he said. “I shared these materials with other area stations, and they quickly adopted and put them to work.”

Delaney has also worked with area high schools, helping them establish radio stations of their own and creating an internship program for high school students at KSLU, considered the best college radio station in the south by Southeast Journalism Conference.

Department Head of Languages and Communication Lucia Harrison applauds Delaney’s work with Southeastern students, as well as several Louisiana high school radio stations to promote both KSLU and Southeastern.

“Mr. Delaney leads with the goal of producing prepared, qualified graduates to join the workforce. He mentors students, sharing his 25 years of radio experience with the expectation that they will join the broadcast industry and quickly earn leadership roles,” she said. “He has established KSLU as a beacon to recruit high school students regionally and throughout the state.”

To better serve his students, Delaney maintains contact with industry professionals in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It helps him, he says, to keep current on skills Southeastern broadcast graduates need for success. He also utilizes his industry contacts to match students with professional internships to ensure they gain real-world experience while still in college. As a result, several of his students have secured careers in broadcasting that include jobs at Cox Radio, iHeartRadio, and Guaranty Broadcasting.

Delaney has a unique, humbling view of service.

“Sharing your talents for a greater cause to benefit a larger organization or group is what service is all about,” he said. “I believe we are all called to do that.”

In addition to his work in area high schools, Delaney has dedicated both his time and talents to many other organizations outside of Southeastern, such as Child Advocacy Services, Options, United Way of Hammond, Children’s Discovery Museum, Hammond Fire Prevention Bureau, Hammond Regional Arts Center and several others. He has served as a guest speaker at Rotary and Chamber of Commerce meetings, has volunteered with the regional Spelling Bee as a pronouncer and has served as the graduation announcer for Northshore Technical Community College.

On campus, his voice can be heard as the emcee of various events, narrating graduation ceremonies, providing a voice and producing to the university’s telephone on-hold system and make public address announcements during home football games.

Delaney has also volunteered with his church, serving as a Eucharistic minister to inmates at Angola State Prison; helping serve food at St. Vincent DePaul, and cleaning out homes and hanging sheetrock following the August 2016 flood.

When asked what service role he enjoyed the most, Delaney said he simply could not choose - that it was “like asking me which one of my  kids I love the most.”

“I enjoy collaboration, bringing many people together to work toward a common goal,” he said. “But I especially like getting the students involved so they see what community service is about. They witness the benefit of public radio and how it serves the public. To see that in action is one of my favorite aspects of service projects.”

Associate Professor of Communication and Honors Director Claire Procopio has worked with Delaney for the past decade and admires his sense of service.

“As the General Manager of KSLU, Todd has found many ways to marry his servant’s heart with his vocational calling in radio – and the Hammond community is all the better for it,” she said. “He is a treasure – bringing to life the KSLU mission to ‘provide outstanding community service’ and ‘pursue all tasks with excellence.’”