The Elon graduate and former news director of “Elon Local News” was part of a three-person crew conducting interviews and gathering footage of arriving first-year and transfer students.
In summer 2012, Gary Grumbach ’16 moved onto campus and settled into his Colonnades Neighborhood dorm room with the help of a few family members and enthusiastic orientation leaders. Seven years later, he returned to his alma mater on Aug. 14 as part of a three-person MSNBC crew to chronicle the university’s official Move-In Day.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the university’s Move-In Day was adapted this year with new policies and measures in place to promote a healthy and safe start to the academic year. Grumbach, a NBC News reporter, and the MSNBC film crew visited campus to cover the move-in experience, interviewing first-year students and their families about the updated process and their feelings about studying on campus.
For a full recap of the university’s COVID-19 pandemic response, visit the Ready & Resilient site.
A former “Elon Local News” news director, Grumbach crossed paths with a few working student journalists at the Schar Center, which hosted the university’s Health Check-In, where arriving students had their temperatures checked and received their Ready & Resilient Kits. Afterward, Grumbach and the crew visited residence halls to speak to families as they moved in.
If Grumbach is a familiar face, it likely because he spent much of the past year working as a member of NBC News’ 2020 embed reporting team, covering the campaign of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. He traveled extensively with the U.S. senator from Vermont during the fall and winter until the pandemic hit. With Sanders in North Carolina for a rally last September, Grumbach was able to return to campus to discuss his campaign coverage with Associate Professor Rich Landesberg’s Television News Reporting class.