2013 BEA Distinguished Education Service Award (DESA) Presented to Dr. Robert K. Avery, University of Utah
Washington, D.C. — Dr. Robert K. Avery, University of Utah, has been named the 2013 Broadcast Education Association’s Distinguished Education Service Award (DESA) winner.
Professor Robert K. Avery has been a BEA member since the mid-1960s when the organization was still known as the Association for Professional Broadcast Education, and he has been providing sustained leadership to the association since joining the Utah faculty in 1971. While he was first selected that year to chair the Educational Materials Committee, his service commitment to BEA has expanded to include four terms on the Board of Directors, the first two as an elected district representative and the second two as a result of Committee Chair positions. As Chair of the Publications Committee, he led the conversion of the scholarly journal mail-based reviewing system to the current electronic reviewing system, and broadened the editorial purview of the Journal of Radio Studies to the renamed Journal of Radio & Audio Media. He also led the conversion of Feedback to become the Journal of Media Education. He was a member of the original BEA Festival Committee and contributed to the drafting of the retention and promotion guidelines for the assessment of performance standards of academic colleagues engaged in creative scholarship. As the current Research Committee Chair, Professor Avery coordinates the association’s Research Symposium Series, Podium Session Series, and serves as the series editor for the publication of annual research volumes by Routledge.
The selection of Professor Avery for the 2013 DESA recognizes his distinguished service across the entire communication discipline. During his career he has served on the governing boards of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, the International Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the Western States Communication Association, an organization he also served as president. He is the Founding Editor of Critical Studies in Mass Communication, and has served on the editorial boards of more than a dozen scholarly journals, including Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media and Journal of Radio & Audio Media. He has had a profound impact on the scholarly publications of the communication discipline by chairing the publications committee of not only BEA, but ICA, NCA, and WSCA as well.
Professor Avery has also contributed to media education through a program of research that spans more than four decades. He has investigated the comparative effectiveness of utilizing various instructional materials in the classroom and has traced the evolution of educational and then public broadcasting in the United States. Among Professor Avery’s numerous honors, he is the recipient of the BEA Research Excellence Award, the Broadcast Industry Conference Preceptor Award, the WSCA Distinguished Service Award, and at the University of Utah he has held the honorary ranks of University Professor and Presidential Teacher-Scholar.
The DESA is awarded to an individual who has made a significant and lasting contribution to the American system of electronic media education. The award will be presented to Dr. Avery at BEA’s 2013 annual convention ceremony in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 7, 2013.
About the BEA Convention BEA’s annual convention is held in conjunction with NAB Show in Las Vegas every spring. Co-located next door at the Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, BEA’s annual convention attracts 1,200 educators and students with 200 sessions, events, research panels, technology workshops and an exhibit hall, making BEA NAB Show’s largest conference partner.
About the Broadcast Education Association The Broadcast Education Association is the professional association for professors, industry professionals and graduate students interested in teaching and research related to electronic media and multimedia enterprises. There are currently more than 2,500 individual and institutional members world wide. Visit www.beaweb.org for more information
