President’s Corner
Vic Costello – March 2, 2022
Congratulations to everyone who was recognized this week with a faculty award in the 2022 Festival of Media Arts and/or who mentored any of this year’s student winners. I’m thankful for the work of Sandy Henry, our Festival Chair, and for countless others who volunteered as a competition chair, judge, or member of the Festival Advisory Committee. As a past Festival Chair, I know first-hand the enormity of this undertaking and couldn’t be any prouder of BEA and everyone involved for keeping the bar set high and a job well done!
Also, if you are looking for $$ assistance getting your student award winners to Vegas next month, encourage them to apply for the RAB Student Scholars program. This year, the Radio Advertising Bureau will offer up to 150 students a package that includes a complimentary registration to attend BEA2022 and NAB Show in Las Vegas April 23-27, and $150 dollars in travel support. The deadline has been extended with rolling applications accepted through mid-March. And please let your students know that applications are open to all undergraduate and graduate electronic media majors (at member institutions), regardless of whether they are focused on radio broadcasting as a career.
I’m dedicating the remainder of this edition of President’s Corner to an update on some recently approved initiatives from the BEA Board of Directors that we are greatly excited about—and that I think add considerable value to our association’s membership benefits.
Student Media Clubs for ALL institutional members schools
In an ongoing quest to expand BEA Student Media Clubs while adding value to student membership benefits, BEA is now granting FREE membership in BEA Student Media Clubs to all currently active institutional member schools and programs. This means that institutional members will no longer be required to pay the annual $100 application fee for starting or maintaining a BEA Student Media Club on campus. Last year, in support of recommendations from the Diversity and Inclusion Committee and Task Force, the Board approved a measure allowing HBCU institutional members a first-year application fee waiver to assist in the startup of a BEA Student Media Club. This new initiative goes a step further by establishing a permanent fee waiver as a benefit for all institutional member schools that renew annually. This action increases the value of an institutional membership for all participating schools and eliminates a hurdle that we hope will encourage more colleges and universities to establish and maintain a BEA Student Media Club, while more fully engaging their student members in BEA program offerings.
New Graduate Student Membership Structure for Institutional Member Schools
BEA will soon combine the MA-granting Institution and PhD/MFA Institution categories into a single new category called Graduate-Degree Granting Institutions. We believe this streamlining of the membership options will eliminate confusion and help to simplify the annual renewal process for institutions with graduate electronic media programs, regardless of the type of degree being offered.
New BEA institutional membership category for “Graduate-Degree Granting Institutions” that includes FREE memberships for graduate students.
For an additional annual cost of $200, an institutional membership for Graduate-Degree Granting Institutions who select this optional add-on, will include FREE student memberships for their graduate students. This benefit will be implemented in much the same way that we currently provide free memberships to full-time undergraduate students attending institutional member schools.
Expanding complimentary membership to graduate students will offer them more accessibility to our resources and apply for BEA grants, awards and scholarships and showcase their research and creative works in our competitions.
Student Achievement Rankings for the Festival of Media Arts – Coming March 31!
In recognition of Institutional Excellence in Media, BEA will announce the first annual Student Achievement Rankings in the Festival of Media Arts on March 31. The rankings of schools will be updated and released every year and is based on the creative achievement of students from institutional member schools, as determined from an analysis of the past five-year period of student success in the BEA Festival of Media Arts.
The rankings are not an overall evaluation of an academic program, but an evaluation of the quality and consistency of students’ creative works produced at one institution compared to those at other institutions participating in the Festival of Media Arts over the past five years. Because of the breadth of media taught at participating institutions, individual rankings will be provided in each of the seven different media competitions that have at least a five-year history. Additionally, we will publish an Overall Ranking based on a combined achievement across the multiple media creative disciplines.
The idea for an annual ranking of student achievement in the Festival of Media Arts has been in the works for several years. This past year, the Festival Committee and Festival Advisory Committee collaborated to create a process and methodology for determining the annual rankings and voted unanimously to present their proposal to the BEA Board of Directors last fall, where it was subsequently approved.
Stay tuned!
We are in the process of updating the BEA Website to reflect these changes in BEA membership benefits. In the meantime, please help spread the word within your professional networks and/or campus departments and schools.
