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COSIDA CONFERENCE CALLSeptember 21, 2016Tyler CundithMark LaFranceJeff GriechIra ThorTam FlarupJEFF SCHWARTZ: We'd like to lead off with Tyler Cundith, communications director at Johnson County Community College, chair of the CoSIDA Publication & Digital Media Contest Committee, and CoSIDA board member in his 25th year as SID at Johnson County. Tyler will talk about the Publication and Digital Design Publication contests. TYLER CUNDITH: Hi, everyone, thanks for joining today. I'm just going to briefly describe what the contests are. We have various contests from posters, media guides, special publications and in the last two years we've added some new contests. Those are more towards the digital side. This year we have video features for both university and college divisions. We have info-graphics that profiles either an athlete or an event or feature event or a game. Then last year we added game notes for both university and college divisions and we also added an online magazine. A lot of schools are doing that now on their web and to promote the program, so we thought that would be a good feature to add. The two divisions, the University Division is all the Division I NCAA schools. The college division is everybody else from NCAA Division II all the way down to the community college level. To enter these contests, it's very simple. The information will be on the website, the CoSIDA website, and there you can find out who the contest coordinator is on the publication that's online. And then when it comes to submitting that, you fill out the entry form that will be loaded on the website as well. Make sure you designate if you're a university or college division participant, and then fill that form out, send it in with your publication or your entry and then you have an opportunity to be recognized for the work that you do. You know, we spend a lot of time on publications and info-graphics and videos and game notes and a lot of people don't realize how much time you put into it, and here's an opportunity for you to be recognized, not only amongst your peers but within your university or college, and be able to see the kind of work that you do. So I really encourage everybody to get involved, submit your stuff, because we have so many great publications that we produce, and we just need to get more people involved so they can recognize everybody. JEFF SCHWARTZ: Any questions for Tyler and the Publication and Digital Design Publication Contest? TYLER CUNDITH: I just encourage everybody to submit their entries in and let's get those awards out next year for everybody. JEFF SCHWARTZ: Next we have Tam Flarup who served since 2010. She recently retired as a Director of Website Services for the University of Wisconsin Athletics program where she was a member of the communications staff for 39 years. Tam will visit with us about the Special Awards process. What do you have, Tam? TAM FLARUP: Thank you. Thank you. It's appropriate to follow another segment that talked about recognition because that's what Special Awards is all about, providing members the recognition for their good works and their good deeds as well. I encourage you to open the CoSIDA.com browser and go to the awards page. There you'll see a list of the descriptions, a list of the awards and their descriptions and it also contains past winners. So if you are interested in nominating someone, you can see the variety, a large variety of awards both university and college division, that are available to you. And there's nothing like being recognized by your peers. It's just the greatest moment having done this for several years and talked to a lot of award winners. It's one of the highlights of their entire career to receive a CoSIDA Award. A few of the awards have some restrictions. The Rising Star, for instance, is both the college and university division, but candidates must be a member who has worked full-time no more than ten years in the profession. Now Internship or graduate assistant positions do not count for full-time. So when you're looking at someone's resumé, ten years would not include those things. The Hall of Fame nominations, when you think of Hall of Fame members though, you would certainly think beyond ten years, I think. The 25-year and Lifetime Achievement Awards are all self-nominating, however, you could nominate someone for that as well. Again, Lifetime Achievement has to be 25 years, full-time in the profession to be considered for that and same with 25. When you're nominating, you can include up to five attachments, such as resumés or letters of support, maybe articles that have been written on a candidate. If you have more than one letter of support, I would encourage you to bundle it as one pdf, however, and have that be a category of attachment, as opposed to having five separate letters of each person that is on this Special Awards committee would have to then open. So just think in terms of categories for your attachments. Just a little bit about the committee. Oh, one more thing on the nomination. A lot of times you see there is a whole nomination online form to fill out and there is a space for rationale. And think of the rationale as a lead that wants you to read the rest of the article. Sometimes we have nominations that say "see attached." Well, that hardly is a great lead-in to have you review -- I mean, we're reviewing a lot of nominations. So you have to make your nomination as good as you can, just like you do when you're writing an article. The committee has 30 members. They vote on Special Awards and they vote on the Hall of Fame Awards as well as the Hall of Fame past members. The committee represents every district of CoSIDA and has equal numbers of male and female members in various ages or stages of their CoSIDA career. It also has representatives for all divisions, including NIA, Two-Year, and Canada, and several members from conferences. Members have to serve a minimum ten years full-time to be appointed to the committee. Nominations this year will be closing at midnight eastern time Sunday, January 29th. That's an absolute deadline. Nominations are open now and have been since the summer. They close for the two-week voting period, which will conclude Sunday, February 12 and they'll reopen for the following year. So you can really nominate at any time of the year, except for our two-week voting period. The announcement of winners is made following the board approval in March. After that, resumés and articles are arranged to be written on each of the award winners and then those are published on both the CoSIDA website and in the awards program for the summer workshop. At this time, I'll entertain any questions. JEFF SCHWARTZ: Moving on to the CoSIDA Scholarships Committee, we have Jeff Griech, a Senior Associate of Communications at Nebraska, and chairman of the CoSIDA Scholarship's Committee. He has been at Nebraska for 20 years and was a two-time winner of CoSIDA post-graduate scholarships, long before joining the committee eight years ago. Jeff will expand on the important elements of the scholarships program. Jeff? JEFF GRIECH: Welcome, everyone, into this webinar today. We appreciate having you. First off, I have a little powerpoint presentation that will be available on the webinar after the fact, so anybody can reference this. The first thing, we'll just go ahead and start with our mission statement, and that is really that we're designed to help members of CoSIDA, as you can see there. But not only current members, but maybe future members of CoSIDA through our scholarships and grants program. If we look at the history of our scholarship program, we began back in 1981, which is 35 years ago with one scholarship, one post-graduate scholarship, and we've grown to two post-graduate scholarships now that are each worth $7500, two undergraduate scholarships that are each worth $3,000, two CoSIDA member child scholarships which are $1000, that's our newest program, and then one Graduate Internship Grant which is $12,000. The graduate Internship Grant is designed for current SIDs in understaffed offices to apply. It's not an award that is directed in advance toward a specific person, necessarily. It's for the office, and then the director of that office can designate a recipient after the fact. The hope in that program is that we designate an office who can then grow that scholarship or grow that position with the grant into a full-time internship or a position moving forward. The general requirements for our scholarships, basically 3.0 grade point averages for our undergraduate and post-graduate scholarships. Then a recipient, the applicant, needs to be a full-time student for the year that will be awarded. That will be for the academic year that they are to receive the scholarship. Sometimes that's a little bit confusing for the applicants, but that is something that we are looking forward to, and they need to be active in SID offices at their schools. Need is strongly considered for those scholarships. So even if sometimes you don't have a terrific GPA in those categories, your need for a scholarship might be an overriding element to the committee. Remember, child scholarships, those are for CoSIDA members who have been members for a minimum of ten years and their children need to be enrolled for the full academic year coming up, and again, need is considered in those. And I've already kind of gone into the Graduate Intern Grant and what the intent is there, but that application process is a little bit different. Basically that is a plea by the SID to describe how and why they need that grant. And we accept not only letters from the applicants, but also supporting letters from maybe the athletic director or other people who can really describe the need that you have. My advice to anybody that is applying for that internship grant, don't hold back. If you are applying for that one, that one is competitive, and everybody that applies needs that one. So you kind of have to set yourself apart with the way you apply for that grant. The advice I have for applicants is really to meet the requirements and to meet the deadlines. We have way too many people that wait until the last second to take a look at the applications online and then they're not prepared at the end. So they need to check on those scholarship dates in advance. Check on the application deadlines and get started early. The one thing that is probably surprising about our rewards is that they are not overly competitive. And by that, what I mean is you, as an applicant, are not applying against hundreds. You are generally applying against dozens. And we'd like to see our applicant numbers increase, so what anyone can do to spread the word on that would be appreciated by the committee because we are doing that as well. There is a link to that on CoSIDA's website, and look under awards and contests, and that's where you'll want to be. Next frame is our deadlines for the upcoming year. Basically for the undergraduate scholarships the deadline is Thursday, April 20th, and for the graduate, post-graduate awards, it is Thursday April 27th. So make sure to pass along those deadlines and make your students and your interns aware of those dates. Final frame, as a committee, we're hoping to better serve the committee or better serve CoSIDA, I should say, in the future and maybe expand our member child scholarship. We are looking at doing that, and we're always open to new ideas as well. Because we believe we are here to serve the committee and serve the future of CoSIDA. If you have any questions about anything coming up, feel free to contact me at the information on that frame. Any questions for me? JEFF SCHWARTZ: We have a couple questions for you, Jeff. JEFF GRIECH: Sure. JEFF SCHWARTZ: The first one and a reminder, questions should be submitted via the questions tab on the webinar portal. First question, does the undergrad scholarship have to be a member of CoSIDA to be eligible? JEFF GRIECH: No, absolutely not. The undergraduate applicant does not need to be a member. They just need to be a student with full-time enrollment, and they need to be active in an SID office. But that is a wide interpretation, and we encourage a wide interpretation. So if you are an undergraduate student and you volunteer in an SID office, that counts. If you are an undergraduate student and you serve on a stat crew, for an office, that counts. You have to have some kind of a role, and you have to be supported by a member, really of an office, so that really is all it needs. But even the director of the office, if that's the one that is promoting you for that scholarship, I don't really think that we have required that that person be a member of CoSIDA as well. It's better because then they can hopefully promote you to us, but I don't believe it's a requirement. Q. How likely would it be for a Division I CoSIDA member to apply for the $12,000 grant? JEFF GRIECH: Yeah, we've had applicants for that award. We consider every application on its merit, essentially. As long as we have been awarding that grant, I think we have found probably the person each year that has done the best job of pleading their case to us and really be specific. Be specific on what you need. If you're a Division I school and you are a full-time member and you have one other full-time member and you're covering 50 sports, that's a possibility. The thing that we see are what you're going up against as a Division I, you're going up against, let's say, a Division III or an NAIA or a Division II, who has one SID, no student help, no intern help, and 28 sports and growing. Okay? So we see those kind of things in applications all the time. But it's really the most organized presentation that is winning that award, because everybody is in need. JEFF SCHWARTZ: There are a couple more segments to this particular question. Q. Is there any criteria that the committee looks at when determining who gets this award? It seems to go to to smaller schools but some D-I or D-II schools are woefully understaffed and don't have a great budget from GAs, interns, et cetera. JEFF GRIECH: Sure, yeah, and really what you get to there is the people that have won that award for us in the past have really been usually one-man shops and their school is adding sports like crazy. I mean, that's really who has been winning that award for us. And maybe they've added five sports in two years and they still don't have anybody else working in their office. And the support for that also is they don't have the ability to hire students or interns. Not only are they a one-man shop, but there is no way for them to actually hire people at their schools, so they were totally on volunteers. But it's certainly we have certainly reviewed every application from a D-I school and we have seen them increasingly and there is certainly nothing prohibiting them from winning. Q. We had a question for Tam Flarup regarding Special Awards. What if someone was nominated in 2012 for an award and did not get it? How long do those nominations stay in the pool and are they saved somewhere? Would someone have to completely go in and create a new nomination if they expire? TAM FLARUP: Thanks for asking that. The awards stay in nomination for a three-year rotation. At the conclusion of three years, I write to the nominator and send them back their nomination materials and let them know it's expired so that they can nominate again if they wish. At the end of three years, the nomination materials probably need to be updated anyway, and a new online application would have to be made so that the clock would start on a new nomination again. So just to be clear, you have to renominate online for someone who has had their nomination expire. But, again, I return the materials to you, so it's pretty easy to do. JEFF SCHWARTZ: Thank you very much, Tam, and thanks for the questions. Reminder, questions should be submitted via the questions tab on the portal. Next we'll move on to the Academic All-America program. Mark LaFrance is entering his third year as the Assistant Athletic Director for Communications at High Point University. Mark is Vice Chair for the Academic All-America committee. Mark is going to talk to us about that program. I'll send it over to you, Mark. MARK LaFRANCE: Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it. This is my third year on the Academic All-America committee. It's something that's very near and dear to my heart. I feel it's CoSIDA's most prestigious and probably broad-reaching program that we sponsor. I think there are really important reasons why our membership needs to nominate student-athletes for this honor. It's really the only officially recognized Academic All-America program by the NCAA. So make sure you're using that registered symbol when you have either an All-District or All-America winner, so it is a big deal. If we can pull up the statistics, Barb, that Dick form Bentley put together that kind of gives a breakdown of nominations and everything over the past couple years. You can see between all of the divisions of the NCAA there were over 17,000 nominations last year, and only 8.5% of those student-athletes were named Academic All-America. So it's extremely competitive and a really high honor. I know personally, you know, when I have a student-athlete that I've kind of targeted that I feel like has a GPA and an overall body of athletic work that would be a good candidate, I go up to them when they're freshmen and sophomores and tell them you have a really good opportunity to get this incredibly rare and prestigious honor. And I've had student-athletes that get upset when they don't win it, and they work even harder in the classroom the next year and they end up becoming an All-American. It's something that I feel is up there with an All-America athletic honor, it's one of the highest honors you can get as a college student-athlete. And some of the other reasons to nominate, I think the exposure for the University is really important. I think there is a lot of bad news related to college athletics out there in the world right now, and this is something that really ties into what it means to be a student-athlete, why college athletics exists, a good balance of academic achievement and athletic achievement. I know our athletic director is always very impressed when we have these honors, because it really is the foundation of what we do as sports information directors. I think it's our whole purpose is to promote student-athletes and to kind of give a deserving athlete recognition, and I think this is one of the best ways to do that. It is also something that can make an impact on a student-athlete later in life. We have the Academic All-America Hall of Fame program for those people that become an All-American 20, 30, 40 years down the line. What they've done in their life kind of fits the bill of that honor. They're invited back to the convention and given this achievement that very few people have gotten. Big time stars like Drew Brees and Andre Agassi I've seen them just floored by how well the ceremony is run, how prestigious of an honor it is. It's basically a Lifetime Achievement Award. And just your nomination when these kids are 18, 19, 20, 21 can repeat benefits for that person much later in their life. Over the past couple years you have the hallmark athletes in sports, Carson Wentz, Maya DiRado, Ryan Murphy, three-time Olympic Gold Medalist, they've all been Academic All-Americans. It's just something that I think is a really important part of what we do. I'm going to go over how to nominate a nominee next. You must be a dues-paying member in order to nominate a student-athlete for an Academic All-America and Academic All-District. To do that you can go to the Academic All-America tab on CoSIDA.com, to the Academic All-America program, and on the next stage, you can bookmark the form and log in and utilize that URL throughout the year when the different deadlines and such come up. I will go over those deadlines for you in a little bit. Some tips to maximize the nominations. If we can pull up the document entitled maximizing your All-America nominations. This is something that Jim Seavey put together a couple years ago. It's something that I think is very helpful when we're kind of getting your nominations done. There is only a 500-character limit, so kind of making sure that your nomination is at a high level will really help you. And if you guys don't have it up, that's okay. I can go over the bullet points of it. Basically, if you have a student-athlete that's ever been chosen as an All-American or as a member of an All-District team in the past, that should be something at the very beginning of your nomination. It's statistically proven that having that at the beginning helps your chances of getting that person either as an All-District selection or on to the ballot for an Academic All-America. Abbreviations are certainly your friend. You only have a limited amount of characters, so rather than write or spell out two-time All-Conference, you can use 2x or instead of spelling out first, you can do 1st. Those are all things that add up in the end and help you cram in as many achievements as possible. And it is a holistic honor. It's not only a one-year honor, so you want to make sure you include accomplishments from the student-athlete's entire career. You always want to put major athletic awards at the beginning. Anytime someone's been an All-American, an All-Conference selection, anything like that, needs to be at the front. If you put that in the back and lead with statistics or lead with rankings in the nation, those things, I know as a voter, I tend to jump over those people. I'm always drawn to people that have major awards at the beginning. Items like dean's list and things that maybe most of the people on the ballot have are things that probably need to be at the back of your nomination. Sometimes interesting human interest facts about the nominee, if they were like someone that emigrated from Africa, and something that's an interesting part about them, sometimes that can help your nomination too, if you have a sentence or two about that. Another thing, team accomplishments are important. I know personally I always feel strongly if the athlete is on a team that is successful. So any sort of team accomplishments if the team won the National Championship, if they won the conference, those are things that are important. I think it's important to understand that this is sort of like the academy awards or the Heisman Trophy, you're voting for precedent. No, there is no one formula for success. Every person that votes, all due-paying members have different criteria about how they vote. But the things I'm going over now are, I think, practices that streamline across all voting strategies. I think they're things that are going to help you regardless how people vote. Some Do-nots, quickly. You don't need to put the whole person's name in the nomination. That's already going to be attached to the ballots so that's just wasting characters. You don't need to put something like John is a great kid who works hard every day at practice, and we really love him here or love her here. Those are things that we assume if they're on the ballot that they are a good person, and they are contributing to society and they are good students. So those are kind of a waste of characters. You don't need a ton of stats. It's hard to standardize stats across different conferences, and especially when you're getting into at-large nominations and different sports. So those really don't need to have a critical importance in your nomination unless the person leads the nation or something like that. You don't want to understate multiple honors. If a person's a three-time All-American, you don't want to just put All-American, you want to put three-time All-American. It's separating your nominees from other nominees in the field. And again, something like the United States Track & Field coaches Association uses the term Academic All-America. That is not a real Academic All-America program; it's something they're using illegally as a name. So you want to make sure that you're just calling that an academic honor and not an Academic All-America. A couple other tips that I kind of want to go over, there is, I think, a myth among the membership that if your nominee's name is deeper in the alphabet that you have a worse chance of getting the award. I think that's kind of an excuse, personally. I had an O last name and an R last name both get all the way to the All-America ballot and get on the Academic All-America team. So I don't think that's true. So I wouldn't get discouraged if you have a Z name or a Q name. I think the quality of your nomination and the quality of the person overshadows that. I don't like cannibalizing my nomination. Some schools will nominate three student-athletes or I think you end up having the votes split. I always try to find one or two candidates that are an excellent candidate to win the honor. I think I've had a pretty good success rate of Academic All Americans. The GPA minimum is 3.3. If you have athletes between a 3.3 and 3.5, I think it's really important that their athletic starts are elite in the nation. If you have a 3.8 to a 4.0, you can get away with less athletic achievement and more academic achievement. If we can go to the calendar to go over the important dates coming up. You can see the first category coming up is men's and women's soccer. That is the nomination forms available the first week in October. You have about a week to get things done, and then you can see how the process works. The ballot is finalized a few days later, then the district voting is open at that point and the membership can vote on the district ballot where those ballots are all accessed through the Academic All-America panel on CoSIDA.com. The district team is released. Then if your athlete qualifies, you have a few days to update their stats. For instance, soccer if you're getting to the end and your team won the conference and they have the game-winning goal, those are things that you can add in. Or if they won an academic honor, you could put that in. Then that nomination update closes and the Academic All-America committee votes on the All-America ballot and those teams are released a little later. For any questions on the at-large pool there. It's broken up into a bunch of sports. Just quickly, women's beach volleyball, women's bowling, women's crew and rowing, men's and women's fencing, field hockey, women's golf, women's gymnastics, women's ice hockey, lacrosse, rifle, skiing, swimming, tennis, there is a whole bunch. Men's volleyball, water polo, wrestling, so that one is in the spring. So if you have some fall sports that are in that category, you know, you've just got to wait until the spring to put that nomination together. And that full list of sports that I went through there quickly is on the Academic All-America page on CoSIDA.com. Another quick thing too is track and cross country. Obviously cross country is a fall sport, but if you have an All-American in cross country, that nomination is in the spring with the track & field nominations. Just to quickly go over some contacts, I'm always around if people have questions throughout the year. My email is mlafranc@highpoint.edu, and Jim Seavey is our other marketing chair. He's on the board for the Academic All-America committee, and he's jcvjseavey@maritime.edu. And I can get those down on paper and send them out to people who want them in writing. One last point, the Academic All-America Hall of Fame voting deadline, or excuse me, nomination deadline is this November 4th. So if you have any sort of members of your institution that you feel has a body of work both while at school and then over the next ten, 20, 30 years that would qualify them for this honor, you can go on to CoSIDA.com and nominate them. There. Is a specific set of criteria. They have to have graduated from the institution and other criteria, and obviously you want them to have a good GPA. They had to have been an All-American as an undergrad to qualify for the Hall of Fame. There's also like an historical nominee that if you have someone that graduated in the '50s, before the Academic All-America program started, you can nominate in that special category too. So, sorry if that took a while, but if anyone has any questions, I can certainly answer them. JEFF SCHWARTZ: Thank you very much, Mark. I appreciate it. Move on to the Fred Stabley Writing Contest Committee, and Ira Ford will be talking about that process. He's the director of sports information at New Jersey City University, and is in the press box preparing for a soccer match. Ira is a member of the CoSIDA Board of Directors representing the Northeast as a college division representative and liaison to the Fred Stabley Writing Contest Committee. Ira will visit with us about the writing contest process. IRA THOR: Thank you, Jeff. As you said, I'm here today to talk about the CoSIDA Fred Stabley Sr. Writing Contest. I've been on the board liaison for the committee since 2014. It's a contest that in a day and age where people are sometimes writing shorter articles or in different formats or sometimes less and less often, I think it really aims at recognizing one of the bedrock skillsets of the communications profession, and that is the ability to write well. This is one of the great recognition programs that CoSIDA runs. And partially the reason I feel that way is because it recognizes that basic necessity, the ability to craft a well-written story. It's one of the concepts that regardless of the size of your shop, whether you're a Division I power class school all the way down to a junior college, all SIDs at all schools have equal opportunity. Because if you can write well, it doesn't matter your experience level or what size school you work at, good writing is going to stand out. If you have a graduate assistant or student assisting in your shop that's written a good story, I also encourage you to nominate a story on their behalf, because if they're recognized, it will really help their stock when they leave your office and begin that challenging task of trying to land a full-time position. Also, make a note of a well-written story when you see it that you think might be a contender down the road. Don't wait until the last minute, because by the time that contest deadline comes around, you may have forgotten about it as time passes. I talked about the process a little at the convention in Dallas during one of our English 101 panels, for those of you seeking to improve your own writing or want to take a different approach in the way you're writing now, I strongly encourage you to look at some of the regional national and district winners, and these are the examples of the best of the best in our profession. For example, when you're trying to create a graphic, you will often look at some really well-done graphics to try to get inspiration. It's the same thing with writing. When you look at a well-crafted story it's going to help you in your own writing game. Some details of the contest that are well worth noting, some of these appear also on the slide that Will has. The deadline is annually in mid-February. All nominations are done via the CoSIDA.com website by providing a link to the story from your website where the story was published. The contest, of course, is open to all dues-paying members of CoSIDA. Officially this is one of the rare awards where you really do need to self-nominate. I encourage you to do that. I know we have a lot of folks who, you know, they're a little shy or hesitant about any kind of self-promotion. This is something that is a positive thing. I encourage you that if you have what you feel is a well-written piece, please nominate. No one else is going to do it for you unless you beg proper product them. So don't be shy about making the submission. This is a major aspect of our jobs, the ability to write. Something we should all take very seriously. Again, as you said, this is a contest sponsored by CoSIDA that doesn't discriminate because of the size of your staff. Every entry is considered on a level playing field. Contests will recognize such categories as speech writing, historical features, administrator and coach profiles and event coverage writing. Judged on your overall writing style, your correct use of English, your inventiveness, the written presentation, and also the ease at which the reader is able to acquire information. One of the slides has the seven categories. You are permitted to make one submission per category since you have multiple quality pieces, you do have to narrow it down to one, or perhaps that story may be a hybrid that could fit into multiple categories. Also of note, no game notes or fact sheets are eligible. You have to write in prose form. You can be a member of the campus office, the conference office or even from the sports governing body. So anybody who is really a CoSIDA member is eligible. The category for event coverage, that deals with basically a game, a match, a tournament, covering the happenings of a sporting event. The general feature, however, is an entry that details something such as a group's achievement or a non-sporting event. A coach administrator profile or historical feature will deal with the story of a coach or administrator or have to tell the story of an historical event at your school. An athlete profile is obviously detailing the story of a student-athlete. A blog, which is a newer entry, that's an entry produced with personal opinions, activities and experiences. Season preview and recap, that's fairly self explanatory. And story with video, this is an entry that is accompanied by an internally produced video, and that is important to note that the video cannot be from outside of your office. The video should help tell the story but not be the main part of it. It's really supposed to be something that contributed to it. The judging, I want to mention that really quick, the chairs, Wade Steinlage and Tim Brennan have done a great job over the years putting together a particularly unbiased group of judges. All entries will be forwarded to a district representative. There are eight districts -- the way an Academic All-America works, there are eight districts and each district will have a panel of three judges. The stories will be judged by the category only. And then the top story in each category at the district level will be forwarded on to the national panel of judges. There are three national judges as well. And obviously with eight districts there will be eight national finalists in each category. If you do make the mistake and put the nomination in the wrong category, the district coordinator will try to reclassify it from the proper category. The judging is based on the flow and organization of your article, your story, obviously grammar and punctuation which are fundamental. How interesting or original the story is, the focus and the clarity of the subject, and then obviously in the video category, you're also making sure that the video that you submit does contribute to the story but not tell the whole story. The national winner is recognized each year at the CoSIDA Convention luncheon, the overall best story of the year. All the national winners receive a plaque. The district winners will receive a frameable certificate. You have to print it yourself, but I have a couple in my office that I'm proud of and they really look nice. It's something that's a talking point when people walk in. I know myself on the D-III side, each year at our D-III business meeting we take a moment to recognize everybody in Division III who has won either at the District or National level, and I'm sure some of the other divisions probably do that as well. The district alignments are all online. Very similar to Academic All-America. And other than that, I encourage you all to consider submitting your work or someone in your office that you think is deserving and may not nominate themselves. Thanks, everyone, good luck this academic year, and I'll entertain any questions, if there are any. JEFF SCHWARTZ: Thank you very much, Ira. I would like to thank all of our presenters today, Tyler, Tam, Jeff, Mark, and Ira for their excellent presentations. Thanks for joining us this afternoon for this CoSIDA webinar presented by Capital One, and join us in October for cost-effective software options, desktop and mobile webinar, presented by CoSIDA's New Media Committee. Thanks again to our corporate partner, Capital One who is a presenter of our CoSIDA Continuing Education Program. Thanks also to ASAP Sports for providing a full transcript of today's webinar. They are CoSIDA's official instant transcript provider. Today's webinar and transcript will be available on demand later this afternoon. These on-demand materials will be available in our Member's Only online community, CoSIDA Connect. Check there in the resource library for the on demand items. Again, thank you, and have a great rest of the day. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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