Remember WFIT Pioneer
I found your article on the radio station most interesting. However, you made no mention of the general manager of the station during the period when it grew to 3,000 watts and was voted among the top 3 college radio stations.

During those years, Jonathan Pernick ’85, ’87 M.S. managed the station and was instrumental in attaining both breakthroughs. As a result of many fund-raising and promotional events he instituted, the new tower was applied for and built and the programming format and content were changed, resulting in a great deal of recognition for the station in the world of college broadcasting.

Jon (Jungle Jon) left WFIT to join the staff of Spin Magazine and then joined the marketing department at Elektra Records, eventually becoming West Coast marketing director. After a period of time, he returned to Florida to gain an M.B.A. at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He has just finished a two-year commitment in the Peace Corps, serving as a business development consultant in Kiev, Ukraine. He is currently working as a marketing and sales consultant for a large IT company in the Ukraine.

Jon has many fond memories of and memorabilia relating to his tenure at WFIT. As a result of his public relations efforts, there were several newspaper articles and interviews relating to the station during this time. You can reach him at jpernick@yahoo.com. Alumni and today’s students might find his input of great interest, since the school was such a different place then.

Nancy Pernick

Rest of the WFIT Story
Your Spring 2005 story on WFIT’s 30th Anniversary unfortunately glossed over an important credit to the university’s third president, Lynn E. Weaver. It was Dr. Weaver who understood the tremendous outreach potential of a university-licensed radio station and in the late 1990s directed the university’s Office of Advancement to help the station realize its full potential to educate, inform and entertain. Under his direction, the office, which managed WFIT operations, worked hard to install the station’s first satellite downlink, get interconnected to the public radio satellite system and introduce NPR programming. To stabilize the station finances it secured the first funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, maximized the station’s power within the constraints of the available spectrum space, and chose to do what all successful stations do: build an audience that would support the programming.

We know now that Dr. Weaver’s instincts about WFIT’s potential were correct. Today, WFIT has the largest weekly listening audience in its history as measured by the Arbitron ratings as well as the largest number of loyal listener-members on its donor list.

Dave Kershaw ’81 M.B.A.
University staff member in the 80s and 90s and former WFIT general manager

Kudos to Rassoul From Former Faculty Member
Just wanted to thank you for the well-done faculty profile of Professor Hamid Rassoul describing his research passions and dreams.

An aspect of Prof. Rassoul not mentioned in the brief profile is that besides being the intellectual leader of the Space Physics group—he is an outstanding teacher and university citizen. He is probably one of the few (only?) Florida Tech faculty to win Faculty Excellence Awards in both Teaching and Service. Florida Tech is rightly proud and fortunate that Prof. Rassoul has made his career and home in Melbourne.

Mark Moldwin, Associate Professor
UCLA Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics
Department of Earth and Space Sciences

Ed note: Our records show in the past decade, Dr. Rassoul is, indeed, the only two time recipient of both Teaching and Service awards.