Communication Team Wins Grand Gold
The USC Dornsife Office of Communication, led by Associate Dean for Communication Emily Cavalcanti, won seven regional 2015 Awards of Excellence from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
USC Dornsife Magazine received the organization’s highest honor — grand gold — for college and university general interest magazines. This marked the first year the grand gold designation was awarded for an overall category in the competition and only nine such honors were selected from nearly 500 submissions.
“We added the grand golds because our judges felt the submissions this year surpassed anything they had previously seen,” said Jane Eadie, a member of the CASE District VII board of directors. “They decided that the caliber of some of the entries warranted additional recognition — each winner was really ‘best of class’ for the entire discipline.”
In addition to the grand gold, USC Dornsife Magazine was also recognized with a gold award in the general interest magazines (circulation 30,000 to 74,999) category.
The magazine, which was art directed by Dan Knapp and designed by in-house Graphic Designer Letty Avila, included articles by Senior Writer Susan Bell, Senior Communication Specialist Michelle Boston, Web Editor and Writer Laura Paisley, and Communication Specialist Lizzie Hedrick. The magazine’s augmented reality (AR) feature also incorporated videos by Director of Video Production Mira Zimet and Videographer Matt Meindl, and its distribution was coordinated by Office Manager Letitia Franklin.
The Religion Major at USC Dornsife video, produced by Zimet and Meindl, also earned a gold award in the recruitment videos category.
2015 CASE Awards of Excellence for the USC Dornsife Office of Communication.
USC Dornsife Dean Steve Kay’s “We See Snow Differently” holiday card and accompanying video garnered a silver award in the innovative use of technology category. With creative direction from Knapp, the card was designed by Avila and incorporated USC Dornsife’s AR application, which allowed recipients to place their smartphones or tablets over the card to view the video produced by Zimet and Meindl.
The office’s editorial team also received a silver award in periodical staff writing category for Bell’s “The Man,” Boston’s “Let’s Dig In,” Paisley’s “Fearless Foodies,” and former Editorial Director Pamela Johnson’s “ConvURGENT Bioscience” and “Appetite for Change.”
USC Dornsife Magazine’s “The Food Issue” was recognized with two bronze awards in the cover and periodical design categories. The issue was art directed by Knapp and designed by Avila, and the cover featured an original illustration by Philadelphia-based design firm The Heads of State.
USC Dornsife competed among CASE’s District VII members, which include institutions in Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah. The awards were presented on March 6 as part of the organization’s 2015 conference held in Newport Beach, California. Zimet and Joan Getman, director of educational technologies for USC’s ITS Learning Design and Technology, also presented a communications and marketing track session during the conference titled “Tell Your School’s Story with Video: The Basics and Beyond.”
Since 2009, the USC Dornsife Office of Communication has earned a total of 33 CASE Awards of Excellence at the district level and three awards from the national CASE Circle of Excellence program.