With headphones over her ears and a microphone in the air, Eliza Dunn hits record. She captures sounds of splashing water. Shrieks. Wind. She later goes into the studio to recount the event for an audio story. “I’m at a boat launch just off Route 5 in Norwich, Vermont. It’s late February, and it’s bitter cold,” she narrates into a mic.

Dunn visited the boat launch to document women of the Brave Souls—a group that dips into the Connecticut River every week, no matter the weather. Her audio segment continues with interviews from members explaining the silly yet empowering experience of dipping into freezing water just for the sake of doing it.

Dunn submitted this nine-minute piece to National Public Radio’s fourth annual College Podcast Challenge, and it was one of 10 finalists selected from hundreds of submissions. She produced the story as an assignment for a nonfiction radio and podcasting course taught by lecturer Sophie Crane. 

The course “totally changed my life,” Dunn says. Crane, executive director of the audio storytelling organization Transom Story Lab, has been teaching audio at Dartmouth for three years. Unlike most higher education courses, where students generally know the basics, students sign up for Crane’s class with little to no experience in the subject. She breaks them out of their comfort zones.

“How to talk to strangers is a big part of my class,” says Crane. “Students have to go out into the community and talk to people they don’t know. They have to get off campus. They have to learn about the Upper Valley.” She says many of her students have published their work on public radio or podcasts and is excited about Dunn’s national recognition. “Eliza really went for it. She took a risk to try something new and discovered she was terrific at it.”

Dunn, an English major, enjoys breaking through the constraints of print journalism. “It can get very tedious because you’re moving around little blocks of audio on the screen, and it’s a lot of hunching over your computer. But that’s where I really like audio storytelling in a different way than I like print—it’s where I’m most able to be creative.”

Cutting sentences, stringing together sounds, inserting narration, fading in music—it’s a process she lovingly compares to poetry.

Dunn continued her audio education the summer leading into her senior year through an internship with KOTO Community Radio in Telluride, Colorado. After turning her tassel in June she plans to head out on another adventure, interning with Alaska Public Media in Anchorage. She’s finding that pursuing a career in audio is like plunging into an icy New England river—it just takes a bit of courage.