CSU Student Media Receives Emmy Award for Advanced Media

The Rocky Mountain Student Media at Colorado State University was awarded the National Academy of Arts and Sciences Emmy Award from the Heartland Chapter of the National Television Academy. The award was given in the Advanced Media Student Production category. This is the first year of existence for the advanced media category, and also the first time student media has entered a collaborative project between all different branches of the organization.

“This was the first time all organizations entered a contest together as a team,” said Julia Sandidge, broadcast news advisor for student media. Sandidge was the faculty advisor who submitted the project to the National Television Academy.

Student Media’s entry is a website called, “Today’s Awareness, Tomorrow’s Challenges.” This website incorporates articles, video, interactive diagrams and radio stories about HIV and AIDS. Every aspect of the website was designed and created by seven students from all different departments of Student Media. The following students were involved in the project:

  • Ryan Avery, producer and editor
  • Trevor Simonton, writer and web designer
  • Nic Tapia, video editor and photographer
  • Lisa Streeb, photographer
  • Virginia Singarayar, logo designer
  • Ben Vacha, interactive graphics designer
  • Zach Newton, video photographer

The students’ website won because of the impact it creates on the world. The measure of an Emmy Award is to judge which entries are well-created, but an entry cannot win unless it makes an impact on the people viewing it. The team worked hard to put together a website to show that even though people are aware of AIDS, many are still contracting it.

In the past 20 years, Student Media has won at least 10 Emmys. The project can be viewed at www.studentmediacorp.com under the “media collaborations” section and is now moving on to enter the national awards. Student Media includes The Rocky Mountain Collegian, KCSU, College Avenue and CTV.
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