UA’s Holle Awards Will Give $10,000 to Outstanding Student Writers, Speakers

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama’s College of Communication and Information Sciences has announced a series of awards designed to recognize and reward student achievement in the areas of media writing, public speaking and screenwriting.

The three Holle Awards will give one winning student in each category a prize of $10,000. The prize for each will be awarded annually by the College.

The 2015 Holle Media Writing Award is accepting submissions through 4 p.m., Monday, March 30. Entrants must be an undergraduate or graduate student of any major at UA during the 2014-15 academic year.

Students must submit three single-authored, three-source news stories, each at least 600 words in length. Stories may be class assignments or assignments for campus media, internships, jobs or freelance jobs, and they may be enterprise reporting, feature stories or sports stories. A single-author byline must be clearly visible for consideration.

Entries may be submitted to Tisch Student Services, Reese Phifer 296, by the deadline, and should include three printed copies of each story and a submission form. The student must also submit a cover letter explaining the stories’ importance for the intended readership, any noteworthy information about the reporting process (such as time spent and sources consulted) and, if published, readership or community reaction to the pieces.

Additionally, the College will award the Holle Award for Excellence in Public Speaking, which is open only to students who were enrolled in COM 123 Public Speaking in either fall 2014 or spring 2015 and have been selected by their peers and instructors as eligible to compete. The $10,000 winner will be selected April 25 through a public speaking competition, with a preliminary round scheduled at 9 a.m. and finals at noon.

The third Holle Award, for screenwriting, had a deadline of March 4. The winners of the screenwriting and media writing awards will be recognized at the College’s Honors Day ceremony April 3.

Additional information about all three awards, as well as an entry form for the Media Writing Award, can be found here.

The awards are named for UA alumnus Everett Holle, who earned a Bachelor of Arts in broadcast and film communication in 1950 and who has continually supported the University and the College of Communication & Information Sciences, which sponsors the award.