The students from the School of Communications are no strangers to awards or national rankings.
Here are a few of the awards that highlight the work from students in the School of Communications this past April:
Society of Professional Journalists Awards
The Mark of Excellence Awards annually honors the best in student journalism. At the regional level, the Universe staff and reporters took Best All-around Non-daily Student Newspaper, in addition to Best In-depth Reporting, Best Online In-depth Reporting and Best Online Feature Reporting. Students were also finalists in the Breaking News, Feature Writing and General News Reporting categories.
The students recognized include Allie Arnell, Izsie Robinson, Ashley Lovell, Lucy Schouten, Donovan Baltich, Megan Kenned, Jenna Koford, Bret Henkel and Luca Cuestas
The Utah Press Association’s Better Newspaper contest:
Students from the Universe, Jenna Koford, Bret Henkel and Luca Cuestas, claimed first place in the Best News Series for their Catfishing series.
Allie Hamilton Arnell took second place for Best Feature Story for her story entitled, “Some Latter-day Saints reject exclusively ‘thou shall not’ teachings on sexual intimacy” on LDS cultural disconnects in teaching about sexual intimacy. She also placed third for Best Breaking News with a story under the headline “Religion scholar protests BYU Honor Code.”
Alex Clark took the second place award for Best Sports Column for his work, “There has been an awakening: Story of the BYU-Las Vegas Bowl.”
Hearst Multimedia Enterprise Reporting Competition
Dora Jallahui Vilca has lived most of her life on the Uros Islands, and is determined to keep her culture alive. Photograph by Donovan C Baltich
The Journalism Awards Program, now in its 56th year, and from 50 entries from 28 schools nationwide, awarded second place to Donovan Baltich, public relations graduate, with a subsequent grant awarded to BYU.
The award recognizes Baltich’s multi-media reporting project about the anti-poverty efforts of BYU engineering efforts in Peru, entitled, “Engineering a way to conserve the culture of Peru’s Uros Islands.”