Goshen College’s communication department took home gold from the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS) awards, as well as the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) awards.

Over spring break, representatives from Goshen College’s radio station 91.1 FM The Globe traveled to New York City on Saturday to receive awards from IBS.

Lucia Nisly, Karen Ramos, both first-years, Laura Hoover, a sophomore, Spencer Buttermore, a junior and JD Hershberger, a senior, attended the IBS awards. Jason Samuel, general manager of WGCS and assistant professor of communication, and Kyle Hufford, general manager of FiveCore Media, accompanied the students.

The Globe was named a national finalist in 21 categories, with first place awards in four categories: most creative show, best sports update, best on-air giveaway and best station logo.

Besides collecting numerous awards, the students had the opportunity to listen to panels and learn about broadcasting.

Nisly said The Globe came back inspired.

“I have a lot of new ideas for how to approach in-studio recording and interviews with artists and I’m excited on starting work on putting together a show centered around that kind of production,” she said. “I know the station as a whole is planning to do a lot more work with modernizing the station through blogging, use of video and possibly integrating podcasts at some point.”

Two days prior to IBS national convention, The Globe was named the BEA’s 2017 Signature Station, the highest award BEA has to offer.

“The Globe was a national champion,” Hershberger said. “That’s a reflection of how hard everyone on our staff works. Just about every school we compete against have broadcasting departments that are half the size of Goshen College’s entire school…so we put in a lot of work.”

The Globe isn’t the only award-winner in the communication department. Both FiveCore Media and GCTV’s team received titles from the BEA.

FiveCore won first place for a live-to-tape multi-camera production. The team included Takoda Friesen, Tim Litwiller, both juniors, as well as Jesse Bontreger and David Leaman-Miller, both seniors.

Riley Mills, a junior, along with Bontreger and Leaman-Miller, also received an award for Mills’ short documentary titled, “Admit One.” Mills wrote, directed and produced the documentary, while Bontreger and Leaman-Miller helped edit with Hufford producing.

“I am so incredibly proud of the work that we have all put into this project,” Mills said about the recognition she received for her documentary. “It’s kind of funny, but when you’ve worked on a project like this for so long it feels like your child. You hope to see it succeed, and when it does you feel this swell of joy.”

David Kendall, associate professor of communication and advisor of GCTV’s The Correspondent, said that to his knowledge, GCTV had never placed in the BEA before.

The second episode of this year’s installment of The Correspondent won a third place award in the television news magazine category. A segment from that second episode went on to become a finalist in IBS’s best video news report category. Karina Flores, a senior, was also a finalist in IBS’s best video sports report category.

Kendall said he didn’t expect to win any awards from IBS, but sent in submissions anyway, hoping for the best.

“We must be doing something right,” Kendall said. “For such a small school to be consistently David in the David and Goliath story is pretty amazing.”

In April, Hershberger, Samuels, Hufford, Friesen and Mills will be attending the BEA national convention taking place in Las Vegas.