Carl Kell

As a retired Western Kentucky University professor with a 40-plus-year career, Carl Kell remembers many students who needed summer internships but couldn’t count on scholarships for support.

Now Kell has created the Dr. Carl L. and Mary Anne Kell Internship to benefit full-time, need-based students in WKU’s Department of Communication, where Kell taught and spent 10 years as its internship director.

“He cares about his students,” said Ryan Dearbone, WKU’s assistant director of college advancement.

Although Dearbone was never one of Kell’s students, he’s known him for years. He describes him as a funny, candid, caring and highly intelligent person.

“I’ve always admired Dr. Kell,” Dearbone said. “He cares about the field of communication and growing it.”

Known for founding the Spirit Masters, WKU’s student ambassadors, Kell continues to teach an advanced communication course each semester despite being retired.

Going forward, Kell hopes the scholarship will create opportunities for students with limited financial means.

“I see this scholarship as a way to help relieve some of that burden and show that the department understands what they are going through and that there is financial assistance for deserving students,” Kell said, according to a news release.

Initially, the scholarship will support three internships each summer beginning this summer.

In addition to the scholarship, Kell is also supporting a lecture series. Each year, the Carl L. and Mary Anne Kell Distinguished Lecture Series in Communication will invite national and international speakers to campus. It’s goal will be to expand understanding of communication in society.

The series will be open to the public and will highlight the department’s degree programs in advertising, communication studies, corporate and organizational communication, popular culture and public relations.

“For a long time, the field of communication has been understood to be merely a skill-based discipline,” Kell said. “It is often believed to be a major of 30-plus hours of public speaking. But communication and the ways in which people get along with each other go far beyond the capacity to deliver a public message.”

Kell’s donation also honors his late wife, Mary Anne, who passed away last year.

The gift includes $24,000 for the lecture series and $7,600 for the scholarship, Dearbone said.

“This is a way for him to leave a lasting legacy,” Dearbone said of Kell’s gift.

Dearbone added that, after years of working with students, “this gives him a chance to do it in a different way.”