Chris James/Pioneer
Mary McAtee, Emily Schorr, Shea Hunteman, Ashley Cleveland, Joniel Prouty, Crystal Rodriguez, Erin Peden gather in the OCCC podcast room on Feb. 23. They were the recipients of Oklahoma Broadcast Education Association awards for Outstanding Work in Television, Radio, Interactive Media and Script Writing by Oklahoma students for 2011.

The Oklahoma Broadcast Education Association recently announced the 2011 Student Competition award winners and OCCC came home with five placings.

“The whole purpose of the competition that started years ago was to give students recognition of quality work so when they graduate they have items on their resume that pertain to their major,” said Rick Allen Lippert, Video Production adjunct professor.

The 21st annual competition was held for outstanding work in television, radio, interactive media and script writing by Oklahoma college students.

Gwin Faulconer-Lippert, Mass Media Communications professor, said the competition is for both two-and four-year colleges.

“There is no distinction between school size,” she said.

Ashley Cleveland, Brantley Cunningham, Shea Hunteman, Mary McAtee, Erin Peden, Joniel Prouty, Crystal Rodriguez, and Emily Schorr will be recognized as OCCC’s winners on March 8 at the awards presentation during the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Convention in Oklahoma City.

“It feels great to be a winner,” said Crystal Rodriguez, broadcasting major.

“I didn’t expect we were going to win anything because we had a lot of mess-ups.”

Rodriguez, Cleveland, Hunteman and Prouty made a podcast titled, “The Tattoo Issue” for their audio production class.

“The topic we had to talk about had to be something controversial,” said Ashley Cleveland, public relations major.

“We wanted to be original.” Lippert said, everything he and Faulconer-Lippert entered under the television and radio categories are projects they assigned in their audio and video production classes.

Erin Peden, journalism and photography major, won for a radio commercial that she created titled, “Textbook Companion.”

“I really like writing and I wanted to make something creative,” Peden said.

“I feel like all my hard work, all the hours I spent in the audio booth, have paid off.”

The professors and students alike agreed that the extra work put into their projects is what made them stand out.

“My video that was entered, “How to Ollie,” was for this specific purpose,” said Emily Schorr, public relations major. “I was really proud of myself when I heard I won because I put a lot of work into this class.” Lippert said the upcoming convention will be extremely beneficial to the students. “It’s [also] a job fair, an opportunity for students from all over the state to go and meet with potential employers,” Lippert said.

“The people at the job fair are all from TV and radio companies.

“We have students get jobs directly from the entries made because some of the judges on the panels are program directors, the ones that have the hiring power,” he said.

Faulconer-Lippert and Lippert are proud of their students’ success.

“Many times winning this competition is an indicator of their success in the future,” Faulconer-Lippert said.

“It might be because of their success in the competition that they go on to take themselves more seriously when it comes to broadcasting.”

For more information on the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters or the awards associated with the convention, visit http://www.oabok.org or call their offices at 405-848-0771.

You can also stop by 6520 N. Western, Ste. 104, in Oklahoma City.

To contact Sarah Hussain, email seniorwriter@occc.edu.