WNUR is all student run and all the on air staff are volunteers — students, alums (like me), and other hangers on from the local community. The only exception to this are the technical staff: the chief engineer and the technicians who maintain the transmitter and equipment work for Northwestern. Not surprisingly the FCC requires people who know what they are doing, and who have the licenses to prove it, handle the details of keeping the transmitter safe and legal. Since I started at the station Tony Tolnai has been the chief engineer (and much else besides); he actually started in 1985, the year before I came to WNUR, but as far as I’m concerned he has always been there as a benign guiding force. He has been in charge of keeping our old equipment functioning, and the planning of two new studios and the moves into them (see here for a little the story of the moves). Here’s a brief, if somewhat out of date, profile of Dezso ‘Tony’ Tolnai, Director of Media Technology for Northwestern’s School of Communication (or School of Speech as it was always known), and WNUR’s long time chief engineer from the October 2002 edition of the [Northwestern Observer Online](http://www.northwestern.edu/univ- relations/observer/stories/10_31_02/tolnai.html).
Tony is retiring after serving us long and well; we’ll miss him.