{"id":86794,"date":"2025-05-08T09:47:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=86794"},"modified":"2025-05-08T09:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:47:24","slug":"dmpj-students-win-multiple-awards-rank-among-the-best-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=86794","title":{"rendered":"DMPJ students win multiple awards, rank among the best in the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Students in Fort Hays State University\u2019s Department of Informatics are no strangers to holding their own against students from larger universities in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s awards won by students in the Digital Media Production and Journalism program back up that point. Continued enrollment growth in the concentration has yielded even more national and state honors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the second straight year, a Tiger Media Network live sports production was named a winner in the Heartland Chapter Student Production Awards of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The Heartland Region consists of colleges from Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Nebraska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce again, FHSU’s live sports program proves it is one of the best in the country,\u201d said Russell Heitmann, news and sports director of TMN. \u201cOur students do excellent work, and to be recognized with this honor is a testament to them and their abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s winning entry in the Live Sporting Event\/Game category came from the FHSU men\u2019s basketball game against Washburn. Students who teamed up for the broadcast included Kadence Allen, director; Cooper Rhea, director; Nick McCoy, replay; Mikheil Makhviladze, camera; Valeria Catano, camera; Kyson Evans, camera; Levelt Similien, camera; Nathan Ward, camera; Tyler Murphy, camera; Garrett Wellbrock, announcer; and Cayden Sanders, announcer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t the only prestigious Heartland Region honor FHSU won this year. The university had two other winners.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The TMN summer internship documentary project, \u201cLife on the Harvest Run<\/a>,\u201d was the winner in the Non-Fiction Long Form category. The film was produced by Raegan Neufeld, Ryan Schuckman and John Billinger. Neufeld\u2019s documentary from her Advanced Video class, \u201cFor Love of the Game<\/a>,\u201d was also a nominee in the category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schuckman\u2019s documentary \u201cGarden of Eden<\/a>\u201d was a winner in the Arts\/Entertainment\/Cultural Affairs category. That film was also part of Stephen Schleicher\u2019s Advanced Video class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you have a great group of students, working with some of the latest technology in the industry, and faculty who bring their decades of real-world experience to the classroom, great things are going to happen,\u201d Schleicher said. \u201cAnd right now, great things are happening at Fort Hays State University.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garrett Wellbrock was also a nominee in the category for Talent-News or Sports in the Heartland Region contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Broadcast Educators Association annual competition, Schuckman\u2019s documentary was second place in the Micro-Documentary category. Alicia Feyerherm\u2019s \u201cFrom Sewer to Sprinkler<\/a>\u201d documentary earned an Awards of Excellence in the division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cLife on the Harvest Run\u201d documentary also was named as an Awards of Excellence in the Short-Form Documentary of BEA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEA contests are not separated by enrollment size or NCAA classifications. Strong showings this year by FHSU students allowed the university to be ranked 13th<\/sup> in the Top Winning Documentary Programs, beating schools such as Michigan State, UConn, Alabama, BYU and Miami. FHSU was the top-ranked school from Kansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort Hays tied for 31st<\/sup> in the Top Winning News Programs and the Top Winning Sports Programs categories. FHSU was tied for 48th<\/sup>in Top Winning Overall Programs \u2014 the best of any Kansas university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen students are equipped with practical experience, tools, resources and outstanding instruction and mentorship, they don\u2019t just learn. They become skilled creators that demonstrate what they can do<\/em> because of how<\/em> they learned,\u201d said Melissa Hunsicker Walburn, dean of the Robbins College of Business and Entrepreneurship at FHSU. \u201cThis powerful combination fosters creativity and positions them to compete with confidence and excellence on both regional and national stages, and eventually the market\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DMPJ students also won five first-place honors at the Kansas Association of Broadcasters contest, as well as two second place finishes and one honorable mention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feyerherm\u2019s documentary won in the Public Affairs\/Talk Show Program category at the College Visual division, while \u201cLife on the Harvest Run\u201d took top honors in the College Visual Documentary category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eli Blankinship and Wellbrock swept the top two spots at KAB in Sports Play-by-Play in both the College Audio and College Visual categories. Blankinship took first in both, with Wellbrock finishing second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiger Media Network won first place for website in the College Audio category and was honorable mention in the College Visual division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Society of Professional Journalists Region 7 Mark of Excellence Awards, TMN\u2019s Rory Moore was a finalist in three categories: Arts\/Graphics\/ Multimedia, Sports Photography and Regional Political Reporting. Region 7 of SPJ is made up of colleges from Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always great to see our students get the accolades they deserve for their hard work, especially when competing against some much larger schools in the U.S.,\u201d said Nick Schwien, director of Tiger Media Network. \u201cOur students think big and don\u2019t limit themselves. Whether as an individual or a team member, they work hard to stand out from the crowd. It\u2019s a trait that makes them success while at FHSU and after graduation as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find out more about the Department of Informatics<\/a> at FHSU and Tiger Media Network<\/a> by visiting their websites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students in Fort Hays State University\u2019s Department of Informatics are no strangers to holding their own against students from larger universities in the country. This… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86795,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,3398,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-campus-news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/KAB-participants.jpg?fit=1440%2C1080","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86797,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86794\/revisions\/86797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/86795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}