OCU's Mass Communications Department was in the Broadcast Education Association鈥檚 inaugural Institutional Excellence in Media rankings for Top Winning Audio Programs. The rankings are based on the creative achievement of students and are founded on the results from the BEA Festival of Media Arts.
The BEA Festival is the preeminent international media competition focused on student and faculty creative endeavors. In the last five years alone, nearly 6,000 student creative works were submitted from BEA鈥檚 more than 300 member institutions around the globe for an extensive juried process.
The BEA rankings take a unique approach to the evaluation of academic media programs from across the globe. Instead of being an overall evaluation of an academic unit鈥檚 curriculum and structure, comparison of institutions is done by looking at outcomes. Those outcomes are the quality and consistency of student鈥檚 creative works from one participating institution as compared to others. While BEA has been systematically evaluating student works for over 30 years, the annual rankings are based on the past five-year period of student success.
Schools and students can submit their creative content in multiple media categories including Audio, Documentary, Film & Video, Interactive Multimedia & Emerging Technologies, News, Scriptwriting, and Sports. Student creative work goes through a rigorous blind-juried process that includes multiple evaluations by both academic and professional experts from cross the country.
On average, only the top 20% of entries are even considered for awards. These finalists are then judged for five levels of awards: First Place, Second Place, Third Place, Award of Excellence and the special honor of being Best of Festival. The rankings take into account both the quantity and quality of student works. For instance, Best of Festival winners are given a higher weight than Awards of Excellence.
Each school鈥檚 student achievements are then calculated and ranked for each of the seven competition categories. Additionally, there is an overall ranking based on a combined achievement across the multiple media creative disciplines, and specifically in this case, combined across all festival competitions.
Newer categories without five years of results were not considered for this year鈥檚 rankings. While the BEA honors outstanding achievements of both faculty and students, the rankings focus solely on student accomplishments.
In the 鈥�2022 BEA Festival School Rankings,鈥� 170 schools are represented with student winners. The statistics are compiled and confirmed by the BEA Festival Advisory Committee, which is made up of past festival chairs and creative directors.
