Web Team Snags Honors in National Competitions

The CATS Web Office is gearing up for another busy academic year and it does so after learning this summer that it was the recent recipient of some impressive awards from the University and College Designers Association (UCDA).

Three projects submitted by the office garnered recognition, including two videos and one website. Going up against submissions from much larger universities like Harvard, Northwestern, Auburn, and the University of Illinois, EIU had two of the 11 recognized videos and one of eight websites receiving honors.

While the office as a unit collaborated on these award-winning projects in various ways, a bulk of the load was shouldered by Michael Babcock, the office’s videographer, and Jamie Kemp, the office’s graphic designer.

One video was produced for the university’s Autism Center in an effort to support the center’s crowdfunding campaign, while the other is a powerful recruitment piece that was originally created for one of the university’s Admitted Student Day functions in February and has since been utilized for many other recruitment purposes.

The website to receive honors was built and designed to highlight Eastern’s 2013 Annual Report.

Ryan Gibson, Director of Web Services, believes it is important to note the effort to get student workers involved in these projects.

“A cool thing about these projects is that each had undergraduate students on the production teams,” said Ryan Gibson in a recent university press release. “At EIU, we talk a lot about hands-on experience.  (Our students) now have award-winning videos/websites to include in their portfolio.  In our industry, having these types of items in a portfolio gives our students a huge step up against other applicants.”

Babcock’s previously mentioned recruitment piece also recently brought home Award of Distinction honors at the 18th Annual Videographer Awards Video Competition. Entered into the Educational Institution category, the EIU entry went up against work from all over the country and was one of eight videos in its classification to garner Distinction status.

According to the awards website (www.videoawards.com/) this is “one of the oldest and most respected awards programs in the industry” with an aim at “honoring talented individuals and companies in the video production field.”