At the Association for Communication Excellence conference in Indianapolis June 11-14, NDSU Agriculture Communication staff received the silver award in educational technology for their Communication Camp. The three-day intensive camps for agriculture and Extension faculty and staff include intensive hands-on work on developing key messages, drafting news releases, writing Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, designing Web pages and producing videos. Association members honored were Bob Bertsch, Ellen Crawford, Sonja Fuchs, Rich Mattern, Bruce Sundeen and Scott Swanson.
Also at the conference, Becky Koch, agriculture communication director, was installed as 2013-14 president of the organization, which is made up of land-grant university communicators and similar professionals from across the nation and a few foreign countries. She will host the fall board meeting in Fargo and preside over the 2014 conference in Portland, Ore. The organization is celebrating its centennial during her term. In 1913, a group of Midwestern university communications professionals met at the University of Illinois to form the American Association of Agricultural College Editors.
Bruce Sundeen, electronic media specialist, was elected membership director-elect and will start a two-year term at the 2014 conference.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.