Allen May is retiring after 15 and a half years as the general manager of broadcast news at the Northern Television Center, and he still remembers how the NTC first looked when he started in 2000.

May remembers the building that had the “old 1960s prison green” color on the walls and old linoleum floors, which housed the student-run station for NIU.

He said he’s really proud that his team have turned the NTC into a sophisticated journalism laboratory.

“What was really nice for me was that I had the chance, along with a couple of colleagues, to pretty much build [the NTC] from scratch,” May said. “There aren’t many opportunities like that and so for me to be able to do that, I felt like a kid in a candy store.”

Before his time at NIU, May was an investigative reporter for the NBC News station in Milwaukee, while his wife was a working in Chicago. Both were commuting nearly an hour and a half to get to work with a four-year-old child at home, when he decided to look for a solution.

“One day, as I was meandering in my thoughts, I thought, ‘What would let me continue in journalism and let me be able to not be so far away from the family requirements?’” May said.

May can’t say how he ended up on NIU’s website applying for a job.

“Finding [the job] was like this higher voice said, ‘This is the answer to all of your concerns. This is the job that you need, and this is the work you really want to do,’” May said. “… It was as if some force said ‘They need you, you need them, do this.’”

May has been recognized many times, and has received various awards from the Associated Press, the Northwest Broadcast Association and the Milwaukee Press Club, according to NIU’s website, but he said one of his biggest accomplishments is having his students represent the best in broadcast journalism.

“The kids who come in to the Northern Television Center, many of them learn very quickly it is much more than a classroom,” May said. “It is an environment where they know they can grow … the relationships that they form because of what they’re doing together at NTC seem to become lifelong connections with each other.”

Being a part of the NTC felt like he was conducting a school orchestra, May said.

“The students all enjoy whatever instrument they were playing and we made really beautiful music together,” May said.