UT JEM Students Land Best of Festival Award

Broadcasters-in-training showcased their talents in a national video competition and took home top prize. The kicker is this is the first time UT students have entered the contest.

The group of four students submitted their final project for last fall semester's Intermediate Video course and captured the bragging rights of winning the Best of Festival Award.

"The premier national event for broadcast educators and journalists is the broadcast educators association, the BEA, which meets in Las Vegas every April jointly with the National Association of Broadcasters - It's a huge event," explained the group's leader and associate professor for JEM, Dr. Bob Legg.

The national video contest consists of first, second and honorable mention prizes in categories ranging from news story to documentary to music video.

"It's a great honor to win anything in those categories," he said. "We were fortunate to have a group of four students who even superseded that because they won the Best of Festival Award. Out of all the awards of all the categories, this is the pinnacle."

The students won free Avid video editing software and a collective $1,000 cash prize for their efforts.

"It's just wonderful," Legg said. "It's really a coo for them, for the university and a bragging point for me personally.

"Besides the fact that it's a good video, even beyond that, these are just neat kids - they're all my kids," he said. "I had so many bright students that I work with and it's just a real treat to have some of them get this little extra pat on the back."

The win by this first-time-entry team sets a high bar for JEM students.

"It will be difficult to top this next year," Legg said. "But that even makes it more exciting because you realize what you've been doing is obviously headed in the right direction. We will continue in this and other contests because we really want people to realize we are putting out world-class graduates."