Bowling Green, Ky. - Student Publications at Western Kentucky University honored two of its graduates on Saturday during its 55th annual Homecoming Breakfast.

Jamie Sizemore, the circulation manager for The News-Enterprise in Elizabethtown, received the Herald Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. She becomes the 48th former staff member of the College Heights Herald to be recognized since 1966.

The Talisman Award for Outstanding Contributions in Communications was presented to Dwain Harris, director of the Southern Kentucky Area Health Education Center at Rockcastle Hospital and Respiratory Care Center in Mount Vernon. He is also public relations director for Rockcastle Hospital.

Following the Homecoming Breakfast, a groundbreaking ceremony was conducted for a new Student Publications facility on Normal Drive across from Mass Media and Technology Hall. The building is expected to be completed by fall of 2007.

Herald award
Sizemore has spent her entire 20-year newspaper career with Landmark Community Newspapers, Inc. After graduating from WKU in 1985, she started in advertising sales with The Galax Gazette in Galax, Va. She was then promoted to general manager of The Community Times and Randallstown News, weekly newspapers located in suburban Baltimore. One year later, she moved to Kingston, Tenn., to head the advertising department of the Roane Newspapers group.

In 1992, she returned to her home state of Kentucky to accept the advertising manager’s position at The News-Enterprise. In 1997, she was named new ventures manager at The News-Enterprise which consisted of expanding the newspaper’s portfolio of products. Under her direction, new ventures consisted of online development, stand-alone publication development and local contracted cable advertising sales. In 2000, she assumed the role of circulation manager at The News-Enterprise.

She is the 2006 Newspaper Association of America Circulation Sales Executive of the Year for newspapers with 150,000 circulation and below. In 1998 she was WKU’s Advertising Practitioner of the Year and served on the WKU’s advertising advisory board for many years. She is circulation chair for the Kentucky Press Association. 
Sizemore grew up in Chalybeate Springs and graduated from Edmonson County High School in 1981. She has been married for 18 years to Toney Sizemore and they are the parents of two teenage sons, Grayson and Corbin.

Talisman award
While pursing his bachelor’s in print journalism at WKU, Harris worked for the Talisman from 1990 to 1992.
He went on to work as editor and photographer for Landmark Community Newspapers, Inc., for five years at The Anderson News and the LaRue County Herald News before becoming public relations director for Westlake Regional Hospital in Columbia in 1997.

He completed his master’s of health administration at WKU in 2004 and began work as the director of the Southern Kentucky Area Health Education Center, a grant-funded health education agency hosted by Rockcastle Hospital and Respiratory Care Center in Mount Vernon.

An active member of the Kentucky Rural Health Association and frequent contributing writer to the Rural Health Update, a statewide health news publication, Harris has won numerous Kentucky Press Association awards for writing and photography. In 1992, a story he wrote for the Talisman won second place in the William Randolph Hearst Foundation national feature writing competition.

He is completing post-baccalaureate classes at the University of Kentucky in hopes of pursuing a doctorate in public health.
Harris is the seventh Talisman Award winner since 2004.

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For information, contact Robert Adams at (270) 745-6278.

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