by Tim Gleason

Liz Cawood presents Jennifer Casey with the first Liz Cawood Leadership Award

With the day-to-day logistics of coordinating teaching and research combined with the omnipresent budget stresses of higher education in the state of Oregon, it is possible to lose sight of what is truly going on at the UO. In focusing too narrowly on making it all work, we run the risk of forgetting that each year students arrive with aspirations and dreams, and that we help them build the skills needed to achieve those goals.

Thankfully, commencement serves to remind us of our mutual goals. It is also at commencement that University tradition provides the opportunity for us to acknowledge our students’ efforts in a very public way. For that reason, one of the best moments of every academic year for me takes place as the faculty and graduates march into the School of Journalism and Communication’s commencement venue. The J-School commencement is one of our great new traditions. First held in 1985, the ceremony allows us to celebrate the accomplishments of our graduates in a personal and intimate setting (well, as intimate as a setting can be with more than 250 graduates and about 1600 family members and friends).

For the past four years, our ceremony has been on the lawn behind the Knight Library. As we follow bagpiper Tim Birr around the corner of the library and are met by a pack of camera-toting relatives and friends, the proud audience comes into view and I am once again reminded that teaching in the School of Journalism and Communication is much more than a job. It is both a time-honored tradition and an opportunity to provide young people a path to success. With the conferring of degrees, we honor both higher education and the accomplishments of our students. In addition to conferring degrees, the School also presents awards recognizing the efforts of individual students—efforts that go above and beyond the classroom.

This year the School has added two new awards for students. The Phyllis Van Kimmell Bell Leadership Award and the Liz Cawood Leadership Award gave us the opportunity to recognize two outstanding students and to celebrate the lives of Phyllis Van Kimmell Bell and Liz Cawood. Both Cawood and Van Kimmell Bell attended graduation and made the first presentation of their awards.

The Greater Oregon Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America established the Liz Cawood Leadership Award to honor one of the leading public relations professionals in Oregon. Liz Cawood is a long-time supporter of the School’s public relations program. She was the first professional advisor to the University’s Public Relations Student Society of America chapter and worked to connect J-School students with public relations professionals. Her agency, Cawood Communications, regularly provides internships for our students. The Cawood Award is presented annually to that student who has exhibited outstanding public service in the field of public relations.

The Phyllis Van Kimmell Bell Leadership Award was established by her family on November 17, 1998, as a celebration of her 88th birthday.

All undergraduate students are eligible for this $500 award, which recognizes demonstrated leadership and involvement beyond academic achievement in the School, willingness to take on challenges, concern for others and an ability to work with students, faculty, and the greater University community.

Phyllis Van Kimmell Bell attended the University of Oregon in the 1920s. She was active in student affairs as well as Kappa Gamma sorority, played the leading female role in the campus movie Ed’s Coeds, and still has a passionate interest in journalism. In her remarks, Phyllis told the graduates that she left the UO because of the Depression, but that her years here were among the best of her life and that she never lost her love of the UO. Phyllis and her family traveled to Eugene from Arizona for the ceremony. Her presentation was one of the highlights of this year’s ceremony.

The perpetual plaques for both of these awards will be displayed in the new main entrance to Allen Hall along with the plaques for the William Gurney award for outstanding senior man and the Hillsboro Argus/Emma C. McKinney award for outstanding senior woman. For the moment, they will be on display in the hallway outside the John L. Hulteng Student Services Center.

Just as the Hall of Achievement serves as a reminder to current students of their potential, so do these student awards. We look forward to seeing which young men and women will make their marks in the years to come.