Graduates full of success
AUT graduates have been scooping awards left, right and centre in the media industry.
Past graduates of the School of Communication Studies swept the board at the recent Public Relations Institute of New Zealand Awards in Rotorua and at the Canon Media Awards in Auckland.
PR graduate Melanie Palmer was winner of the coveted Supreme Award at the PRINZ 2011 national awards. She was singled out for this honour for her management of Zespri’s communication response to the Kiwifruit PSA disease. Melanie graduated in 2007 with a Graduate Diploma in Communication and Public Relations.
As well as winning the top prize, AUT public relations alumni were in winning teams for six out of eleven major awards.
The other outstanding win was by BCS public relations graduate Mary-Louise Dare of Professional Public Relations NZ, who was awarded the Sally Logan-Milne Young Practitioner of the Year. She is the eighth AUT graduate in nine years to win this award.
AUT students won all of the prizes in Tertiary Student Project category: Winners were post-graduate diploma students, Isaac Banks, James Roberts, Angela Campbell, Safia van der Zwan and Victoria Ellis, with the Rugby Foundation’s “No8: That’s How We Roll”.
Banks, from the winning tertiary award team, says they were very excited by the win and also to be in the company of so many other graduates of AUT.
“AUT was well represented at the awards. It’s inspiring to see how well other AUT graduates have gone, and we’ll certainly be looking to emulate them in the future.”
At the Canon Media Awards alumnus Donna Chisholm won four awards, the Magazine Feature Writer of the Year, Feature Writer Crime/Justice, Feature Writer General and Feature Writer Human Relations.
Sarah Murray, a graduate of the graduate diploma in journalism in 2009, won the Junior Newspaper Feature Writer of the Year award for her work at the Sunday Star Times and in Sunday magazine.
Murray says the win was a shock but that it was lovely to be recognised.
“I think AUT has such a great alumni of journalists and it is great to have been in their company. AUT gives you the skills to get the jobs and these jobs are the platforms that win these kinds of awards.”
The Student Journalist Award of the Year was won by 2010 graduate Amelia Wade.
Other AUT graduates were a part of winning teams, nominated and highly commended in categories at both awards ceremonies.