DALLAS, Pa. — Jason Kepner, class of 2022 in telecommunications, who started his college experience at Penn State Wilkes-Barre, can now count an Emmy award among his achievements.
Transitioning from Penn State Wilkes-Barre to University Park, he worked with Penn State Intercollegiate Athletics on productions for numerous teams. He is now employed as a television broadcast engineer and assists with broadcasts for college and professional sports teams.
Kepner and his colleagues received an Emmy for their work on Super Bowl LVIII in 2024.
Much of Kepner’s work is behind the scenes, taking care of important tasks that viewers may take for granted. He works long hours during sports events to make sure that broadcasts run smoothly and without interruption.
Starting at Penn State Wilkes-Barre
Kepner, a graduate of Hughesville High School, enrolled at the campus along with his twin brother, Luke. Both brothers opted to pursue a degree in telecommunications as part of the 2+2 Plan, spending their first two years at Penn State Wilkes-Barre before going to University Park.
“It cost a lot less to go to Penn State Wilkes-Barre for those two years,” Kepner said. “Ultimately, it was a much better experience [for me] to have smaller classes at the start rather than having hundreds of students in a class. I also got to be involved in a lot of campus activities.”
He served as president of Student Government Association and was a member of many clubs, including Lion Ambassadors, Blue and White Club, 4 Seasons Club and Radio Club. He also received the Eric A. and Josephine Walker Award, which recognizes an undergraduate student from each Penn State campus who displays character, scholarship, leadership and citizenship and who contributes to programs and services for their fellow students and campus.
Kepner said he thinks his time at Penn State Wilkes-Barre was key to bringing him to the point in his life where he is now.
“Penn State Wilkes-Barre definitely brought me into a leadership position,” he said. “Initially, I wasn’t very social, but the campus gave me a lot of opportunities to lead things and take charge of situations. That changed my mentality on how I approached life moving forward.”
Interdisciplinary work
Kepner’s interest in video production led him to work with Penn State Wilkes-Barre’s surveying engineering program, assisting with developing 360-degree instructional videos for the program in 2019 and 2020. The videos demonstrate proper usage of surveying instruments for outdoor labs.
“Some of my friends were surveying engineering majors and they needed someone who could make videos,” Kepner said. “I got to do this cross-curriculum work for three semesters and really enjoyed it. I worked with Dr. [Dimitrios] Bolkas [associate professor of surveying engineering] and still keep in touch with him.”
Bolkas described Kepner as an “exceptional student,” saying, “Jason has a skill for learning new things and he likes to use the latest technology. This is why he was intrigued by the project and the prospect of using 360-degree cameras for the videos, which at that time was a newer technology. We still use the videos today and the students find them very helpful.”
During his involvement in the project, Kepner attended the multi-campus Research Experience for Undergraduates (MC REU) program, an eight-week program during which a student works closely with two faculty members, one from the student’s home campus and one based at University Park. At the end of the program, students present their research at the MC REU Exhibition. Kepner also published a paper at the 2020 Mid-Atlantic American Society of Engineering Education Conference.
“I didn’t come into college with specific goals in mind, but wanted to take every opportunity I had and see where that would take me,” he said. “It was interesting to be on the front side of 360-degree video and virtual reality when it was first coming out. I was able to learn a lot through that project.”
Penn State camera work
After he transitioned to University Park, Kepner joined Intercollegiate Athletics’ camera crew and production team and had the opportunity to cover a broad variety of University athletics.
“It was my goal as a young kid to be a camera guy on the football field,” Kepner said. “I got to do that and so much more. I was a part of the action for pretty much every sports team Penn State has: football, volleyball, wrestling, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, basketball and more.”
He said it was “hard to beat” the experience of being on Penn State’s famed football field and named a few experiences as some of his favorites, particularly the nine-overtime game against Illinois in 2021 and numerous Whiteout games.
“I also got to see the wrestling and volleyball teams go to the championships,” he said. “We had a great year in sports right before I graduated. It was really cool to be part of that.”
Kepner also worked as a producer for 46 Live, the broadcast that films THON and all the activities leading up to the annual event.
During his final year, he worked full-time at the housing complex where he lived, starting as a community assistant and rising to the role of leasing professional.
“I worked three days a week from sunup to sundown to get my full-time hours in. Then three days after class and sometimes on weekends, I’d film for about 15 to 20 hours a week,” Kepner said.
‘The coolest job on the planet’
As graduation approached, Kepner pursued an opportunity to the final interview process, but found out on graduation day he didn’t get the job. However, four months later he learned of another opportunity from a professor. He applied, interviewed and was hired as a broadcast engineer for GameCreek Video based out of Hudson, New Hampshire.
“I’m a mobile unit engineer now operating our trucks, and it’s the most underrated and coolest job on the planet,” Kepner said. “Every time you see a football game on TV, whether it’s ESPN, ABC or another network, it’s probably coming from one of our trucks. We have huge trucks full of equipment and I’m one of three people who run the truck every week.”
He said it takes a crew of 50 to 100 people to bring a game to television “and those people rely on us every day.” Kepner has field access and sometimes has to go troubleshoot and fix a camera or recording issue on the field.
Kepner has worked games for NCAA football and basketball, NFL and NBA. His job has taken him to stadiums and arenas all over the country. He estimates he has been to more than 100 facilities during the last two years. In addition to the games themselves, Kepner works on pre-show television programs such as a Saturday night primetime show for college football, usually on-site at a school in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). He has also worked at the Super Bowl in 2024 and 2025.
His workdays during such major events are intense and long, he said. For the Super Bowls, Kepner arrived at the site about two weeks before the game and worked 16- to 20-hour days for two weeks straight in preparation.
“During football season, I’m home three to five days a week,” he said. “But during March Madness, I was home maybe five to seven days the whole month.”
Emmy award
Kepner and his colleagues earned an Emmy award for their work on Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas in 2024, when the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers. The award, in the category of Outstanding Technical Team Event, was announced during the 45th annual Sports Emmy Awards. Kepner is listed as one of the broadcast network engineers for Super Bowl LVIII.
“I didn’t even know we could win Emmys until I saw someone from work post that they’d won one, and then that became my [professional] goal,” he said. “It was a very exciting moment when I found out I’d won an Emmy.”
He said the truck he was working in during that Super Bowl was one of about 25 TV trucks at the event, most with different roles. Kepner’s primary duty was working on replays, with the majority of the replays during the game coming from his truck. For the first time, a camera and microphone were placed inside the goalposts, a technology that was set up and produced by him and the engineers in his truck.
In addition to keeping the replays running smoothly, Kepner was on standby for fixing technical issues that may have come up. He and a few colleagues were able to jump in and fix a problem when the main game truck had issues an hour before the live broadcast started.
He credited his teammates for their knowledge and expertise, saying, “I work with an incredible team. The two engineers I’ve been working with have been in the industry for more than 30 years and are super intelligent. Thanks to them, I’ve had some of the best people training me and teaching me how to be good at my job. I’m very fortunate to have that.”