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WKU Home -> News -> Release  Gail Kirkland of Daviess County High School and Amy Noles of Lyon County High School were recognized March 8 during Western Kentucky University’s Mark of Excellence Awards Day ceremonies. The adviser awards were presented by Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., who was the awards ceremony keynote speaker. The high school media adviser award was created to recognize high school media teachers in Kentucky for their journalistic achievements and to honor to teachers who, like Highland, advocate on behalf of their students’ First Amendment rights. Highland, retired vice president for campus chapter affairs for the Society of Professional Journalists, is recently retired from his tenure as news/editorial sequence coordinator at WKU. Kirkland has been teaching 19 years at Daviess County High in Owensboro. She’s been the Big Red Machine newspaper adviser for 17 years and the Echoes yearbook adviser for 13 years. She is an advisory board member of the Kentucky High School Media Institute and a member of the Kentucky High School Journalism Association, Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association. The Big Red Machine and Echoes have won more than 100 state high school journalism awards. The Big Red Machine won a Best of Show award at last year’s JEA/NSPA fall convention in Chicago, best overall 4A yearbook and newspaper at this year’s Mark of Excellence contest at Western. “Gail strives to walk the fine educational line of teaching kids appropriate journalism practices and allowing them the opportunity to exercise their own judgments about newspaper contests,” said Matthew Constant, Daviess County High principal. “She maintains the utmost respect from students, parents, and fellow staff members.” Noles is in her ninth year of teaching, her sixth at Lyon County High. She began the school’s newspaper, Paw Prints, her first year there and added advising the yearbook the next year. She is a participating member of the Kentucky High School Media Institute. Paw Prints has won numerous awards including best overall newspaper in the AA division on two occasions at WKU’s Mark of Excellence competition. Her students have won or placed in feature writing, editorial writing, news writing, layout, cartooning and advertising categories in state contests at WKU and Murray State University. “She has a passion for what she does, and you can tell by the interaction with her students that she lets them in on that passion,” said Heather Peek, one of her former staffers and current WKU student. “She wants her students to succeed and pushes them with such enthusiasm to be successful at whatever it may be.” The yearly High School Media Adviser of the Year contest is sponsored by WKU’s School of Journalism and Broadcasting and the Kentucky High School Media Institute. For information about the contest, contact Jackie Bretz, KHSMI director, or Pam Johnson, director of the School of Journalism and Broadcasting, at (270) 745-4143. More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu. |
