Journalism students brought home 20 awards, including two General Excellence awards and a Pacesetter award, during this year’s Journalism Association of Community Colleges (JACC) bi-annual conference.

“It’s very exciting to have the students do so well,” Lori Medigovich, Union adviser, said. “I was thrilled with the performance our students gave; they really showed their talents.”

Approximately 500 students from more than 45 California community colleges gathered in Sacramento, Calif. from April 7-9 to participate in on-the-spot competitions and workshops led by professionals from the industry.

The Union was one of 10 newspapers to win the General Excellence award and one of five colleges to get a Pacesetter; the last time they received one was in 2009.

“To win the Pacesetter, your newspaper had to win the General Excellence award and your students had to do really well in on-the-spot competitions,” Medigovich said.

Warrior Life, the student magazine that comes out once a semester, was also one of the few magazines to bring home a General Excellence award.

“Winning these awards is concrete evidence that our program and our students are successful, and it just makes our argument stronger when we ask for money for equipment and other needs,” Tom Lew, Dean of Humanities, said.

Lew said to be proud of the department’s performance and will be taking the awards to the next dean’s meeting to share them with his colleagues.

The editor-in-chief for both of these publications was Haipha Simon, 35, journalism major.

Simon has been a part of the journalism department for four semesters and has been editor-in-chief of the paper twice and once for the magazine.

“This semester that we won the general excellence award for the paper, we tried a lot of new things,” Simon said, “we did a new name plate, new style and it was scary at the beginning but we knew we needed some change.”

“With the magazine, I did a completely new layout and new format and it worked for the better,” she added.

Simon is also the student state president for JACC, and represents statewide journalism students at this convention.

The big surprise of the convention was Joshua Sherman, 20, photojournalism major, who won First place for a news photo in an on-the-spot competition.

“I didn’t even know he was a photojournalism student,” Medigovich said. “He was competing against 60 or 70 of the best photojournalism students in the state, for him to win first place was just amazing.”

This is Sherman’s first semester as a staff writer for the Union and his first time attending JACC.

For this photo he took a shot of a new airport terminal that was being built.

“I shot it through a fence and I framed it with some dead leafs and some growing leafs to kind of reflect how the whole terminal was being replaced by this new terminal,” Sherman said.

Sherman himself was surprised by winning this award.

“Being my first semester, I kind of just went in expecting to learn, more than to win anything,” He said. “I guess I just thought differently than everybody else.”

Next semester he will continue to be a part of the journalism department and looks forward to attending a second convention.

“I think everyone who comes to EC and everybody who works at EC can take a great deal of pride in the accomplishments of our journalism students and the program as a whole,” Lew said.