RTF faculty, students to be honored with BEA Awards

Rowan Today, April 5, 2018

Rowan faculty and students from the College of Communication & Creative Arts will be honored this week with five awards during the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts.

Known as the BEA Awards, the annual program showcases creative work in a wide range of communication categories including film, radio, audio production, news writing and promotional materials.

The festival, which will be held April 7-10 in Las Vegas, celebrates work in some 15 categories and last year received more than 1,540 entries for faculty and student endeavors including dramatic narratives, documentary filmmaking, news production and interactive media.

Rowan honorees are:

Radio, Television & Film Associate Professor Jonathan A. Mason (and his co-writer and co-director Hamid Saidji), who will receive a Best of Competition award in the Narrative Film category (Faculty Film & Video Competition) for L'echappee. Shot in the city of Algiers, the capital of Algeria, it is the story of a taxi driver who dreams of leaving his beautiful but tough Mediterranean city to become a photographer in Italy but who’s torn between chasing that dream and living a life in a difficult home that he ultimately loves.

Radio, Television & Film Associate Professor Jonathan Olshefski (and his producer Sabrina Schmidt Gordon) who will receive the Award of Excellence in the Long Form Video or Film Documentary category (Faculty Film & Video Competition) for QUEST. Filmed over ten years, it’s an intimate portrait about Philadelphian Christopher “Quest” Rainey, his wife, their family and their home music studio, a creative sanctuary amid the strife of their inner city neighborhood.

John Campbell, who will receive the Award of Excellence in the On-Air Personality Category for his WGLS-FM show, Metal for the Masses.

Danielle Miller & Matteo Iadonisi, who will receive a 1^st Place award in the 60-Second Promo category for The 90s Collective on WGLS-FM.

Peter Chamalian, Shannon Ferrell, Samuel Taylor & Chante Brown, who tied for 1^stPlace in the Narrative Film category (Student Film & Video Competition) for Step One.

“Rowan has been honored at BEA before, but I’m very proud to say that this year we swept the narrative film section, taking first place in both student and faculty categories,” Mason said.

Several Rowan RTF faculty will also participate in the conference, hosting and presenting on various panels.

Among them, Assistant Professor Chris Winkler will present “Teaching Media 101: Projects, Approaches, and Lessons for a ‘Boot Camp’ Production Course.”

RTF Chair Keith Brand will present “Creating a Podcasting Course: It’s Easier than you Think,” and hosting and presenting a panel on “Innovative Solutions for Department Budget Dilemmas.”  

Professor Mike Donovan, education director of the King Family Foundation, will attend as a representative of the foundation, the conference’s main sponsor.

The 2018 competition ran from November 15 to December 15, 2017 and winners were announced in February.

The Broadcast Education Association is the largest and oldest conference for academics in the field of media production and is a part of the National Association of Broadcasters.