Awards Season is Nigh!

Greetings fellow Communicators! If you were at the Experts Insights with Cyndy Brucato on Monday, you heard some exciting news about the Awards this year! If you weren't there, I guess I'll tell you now...

But first! Our new members might be curious about what the "awards" are. Maroon & Gold awards are presented annually to University
of Minnesota Communicators Forum members whose work
best embodies the University's core values: excellence,
innovation, integrity, diversity, academic freedom, collaboration,
sharing of knowledge, accountability, stewardship, and
service. Awards are submitted annually, judged by an independent panel of outside experts in communications topics, and awarded during the annual conference.  Receiving an award is kind of a big deal...not only personally, but professionally. In this day and age where we are all justifying our value to our colleges and units, an award from the UMCF says to your leadership that you and your work are highly valued and respected.

Here is the UMCF Awards website, where you can read all about the categories, eligibility, etc. Please note that we are in the process of updating the pages.

So, the big news for 2012 is that awards are FEE FREE!! That's right! You do not have to pay a single cent towards awards submissions this year. That means you have no excuse not to enter all your fabulous work! The awards submission window is March 1-March 30. The one change to the process due to the free fees is that we had to do a little something different with the MIKE Award. The MIKE Award is the "People's Choice" award, voted on at the conference. In the past, it was an additional $5 fee for an already entered item. This year, we have decided to cap the MIKE entries at 30. Each college or unit may submit up to 2 entries to be considered for MIKE. These 30 entries are first come, first served, so don't procrastinate!

Our last bit of news is that we are adding a new subcategory to the Writing category. In the past, we have noticed that articles of a more technical nature were not receiving the recognition deserved because they weren't as "captivating" to the judges when compared to other work, like magazine features, etc. We feel that technical writing, while maybe not as glamorous as speech or feature writing, is very much worth recognition because when done well, it is really amazing. More information and criteria will be added to the website soon.

We'll be sharing more information on the Listserv once we get closer to awards submission month! Have a happy February!