Rick Dunkle doesn’t start class with a lecture. Instead, he asks his podcasting students: how real does his AI-cloned voice sound? It gets a few laughs at first as he plays with a few settings. But the room gets quiet—and conversation quickly shifts—when the voice is convincing enough to trigger Siri. What began as a simple demonstration quickly becomes an opportunity to wrestle with deeper issues and the increasingly blurred lines between what’s real and what’s not, particularly in the era of artificial intelligence. It’s the exact type of critical thinking that Dunkle believes his students must develop. You might think a successful television writer and producer like Dunkle would be wanting to head back to Hollywood and the next big hit show. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. He is exactly where he wants to be, serving as assistant professor of communication and general manager of UIndy TV and WICR. Growing up in Indiana, the son of a sociology professor, Dunkle wanted to be in the television or movie industry as long as he could remember. At 5, he was writing scripts and filming them with a home video camera. By middle school, he and his friends were dressing up and filming their own “Star Trek” episodes. He dropped out of college before his senior year to move to California and pursue his dream in earnest. “I promised my family two things,” Dunkle said. “I would finish my degree and, one day, come back to teach what I learned.”
Dunkle in a “Star Trek” costume, filming original episodes with friends, circa 1994.
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MAGAZINE // SUMMER 2026
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