SMAD Faculty and Students Won Five BEA Awards

SMAD Students and faculty won five awards at Broadcast Education Associations international digital media and broadcast competition. This year BEA awarded 295 entries from over 300 participating schools and over 1,500 annual entries from around the world.

Steve Anderson, interactive design concentration professor and former director of the SMAD program, received the Best of Competition Award in the website category of the Faculty Interactive Media and Emerging Technologies Competition. Anderson created a website that features a layout of CSS grid to allow for quicker and more efficient website-building. 

Professor Tale Mitchell of the creative advertising concentration and Professor Shelly Hokanson of the interactive design concentration received the Award of Excellence for their work titled “Racial Undertones in Advertising: Lack of Diversity Divides Us.” This website tackles the issue of racism in advertising, which calls for support and celebration of diversity and breaking of racial stereotypes from the advertising industry. The website includes case studies of advertising featuring racial undertones by companies such as Dove and PepsiCo. 

Digital video and cinema professor Imelda O’Reilly’s screenplay “We’re the Kids in America” received the “Best of Competition” award in the Feature/TV Hour category of the Faculty Scriptwriting Competition. The screenplay is about three generations of Irish fathers and sons set in Ireland and New York. Professor O’Reilly has produced as well as directed many short films and had her work featured at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018.

SMAD student Holden Broughman created an app called “All Things Auto” which won first place in the Mobile Apps category of the Student Interactive Media and Emerging Technologies Competition. The app describes itself as “an app to connect to the automotive world.” It allows car enthusiasts to organize car meets and car shows in an efficient way. Broughman conducted user research to gather data about his target audience and created the app for car enthusiasts of all ages to enjoy.

Seventeen students in the Urbino Italy Study Abroad program created a multimedia journalism project. The promotional video of the project received the Award of Excellence in the promotional category of the Student Film and Video Competition. Six students, with the help of translators, worked on the creation of the promotional video which displays the themes of food, family traditions in Italian culture and highlights all those involved in the food making process.