There will be a gathering of SUNY Plattsburgh alumni in Los Angeles on July 10th at the Sheraton Gateway at 6101 West Century Boulevard, between 6:30 an 8:30 pm. Alumni interested in attending should contact contact Ronna Bosko in the alumni office at (518) 564- 2090 or ronna.bosko@plattsburgh.edu.

Peter Ensel, Director of the Center for Communication and Journalism, will be attending the event and would like to meet up with as many former Communication students as possible and hear how they're doing. (Several Communication alumni currently plan on attending the event.)

Labels: alumni_gatherings

Congratulations to three communications students who were recently awarded first place in the NBS National Student Production Awards Competition.

The following excerpt is from an article which appears in Plattsburgh Magazine, page 5 of the Spring 2007 issue.

Three communications students have been awarded first place in the National Broadcasting Society National Student Production Awards Competition. The winners were announced at the organization's national convention in Chicago, Ill.

A total of eight communication students were named finalists in six categories.

"This was the largest number of finalists and award winners we have ever had," said Peter Ensel '80, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Communication and Journalism. "The three winners all came from different areas, including video, audio and script writing, which indicate we have well-rounded programs.

These honors further exhibit the strength of our communication programs and their competitiveness in both a national and international arena."

In the Video Promo category, Justin Halstead from Albany, N.Y., Ashley Kelley from Stanley, N.C., and Nicole Vitallo from Schenectady, N.Y., won first place for their piece, "U Filthy Animal."

Damien Quinlan from Plattsburgh, N.Y., won first place for his audio drama, "Johnny Sauro: Private Eye." He was also nominated in the audio PSA category for "Aggressive Driving #1."

In the comedy script category, Halstead won for his work, "Midnight Stockers of the Graveyard Shift."


.....continued.....

P.S. It is ridiculous that there is no online version of Plattsburgh Magazine.

Labels: student_honors

As you can already see, the PSTV Alumni website has a new look. Gone are the multitude of different styles that users can choose from, replaced by a single simplified design. Those styles included Yokum Hall (red), Lake Champlain (blue), Adirondack Mountains (green), Avid Keyboard (yellow), and a Minimalist Web 2.0 design (white). While choosing your own website theme was a cool trick, it wasn't really very useful. Plus it also caused a few minor glitches with cookie conflicts. So I focused on making just one good design that works well.

The most obvious new design feature is the new header image of Amity Plaza at SUNY Plattsburgh. I altered the image with some PhotoShop effects and overlays, but I want to thank SUNY Plattsburgh student, Erik Graham, for providing the original panoramic shot, and for sharing his work through a Creative Commons license.

The other notable new design feature is a horizontal navigation menu with expandable submenus. This layout opens up more page width for actual content. Plus it's able to hide lesser-used menu items to reduce clutter.

Also worth noting, I finally got around to updating the PSTV History page to reflect that PSTV has had Faculty Co-Advisors since 2003 (a fact that I was unaware of until this year). There are still many other additional website changes on my to-do list, but most of those are not high-priorities.

P.S. Some of you may have noticed that I copied myself. The horizontal navigation menu is the same script that I also use on my own personal website.

Update 6/13/07: I'm now noticing some problems that show up only in Internet Explorer browsers. There shouldn't be a gray space between the header graphic and the navigation menu. There's also an issue with the forum not being centered in IE too. I'll try to fix those bugs when I get a chance.

Labels: website