The George-Anne Media Group, a student-led news team at 91ɬ��, has earned a bundle of awards, including one that some consider to be the highest national honor among student media.

The headline prize was the Pacemaker Award.

For any news team or other information-sharing agency, keeping up with the latest platforms and storytelling formats is vital. The Pacemaker reflects the creativity an organization uses to reach new audiences and maintain current ones.

The Pacemaker Award, which celebrates media innovation, stemmed from a project students developed and launched last spring.  They created a “Media Zone,” a local center for Eagle Nation to interact with daily topics. Like an old-fashioned town square with a news bulletin posted on the doors of City Hall, this modernized version featured news articles, student polls and photos of the day. 

“It was scary at first, but we all put our hearts into it and we really thought, ‘What do students need and want?’” she said. “This award feels like someone finally noticed us! They see what we’re doing now, and we can do so much more.”

For the awards ceremony, a George-Anne delegation attended MediaFest 22, a national journalism conference, in Washington, D.C . When they returned to Statesboro, they had a new plaque for their office. 

Along with the Pacemaker Award, The George-Anne team also earned a collection of awards for work from spring 2022. The awards include:

George-Anne Reflector Magazine’s edition, led by thenCreative Division Editor-in-Chief Kayla Hill and then Reflector Editor-in-Chief Lauren Sabia

• First place for print design in the contest
• First place for best magazine cover in the College Media Association Pinnacle Awards
• Second place for best magazine feature page/spread in the Pinnacle Awards

Your Newsroom, led this fall by executive producer Nayia Worrell and news director Ashley Watts

• Third place for sports package in the College Media Association ,  Justin Helms,
• Third place for news package in the Film and Video Festival, Ashley Watts,
• Third place for broadcast sports story in the Best of Show contest, Ke’juan Humphries,
• Fourth place for broadcast news program in Best of Show for the , newscast
• Seventh place for broadcast news story in Best of Show, Haley Perini,
• Honorable mention for best video newscast in the Pinnacle Awards for the , newscast 

The George-Anne Daily email newsletter received ninth place in the Best of Show contest for the edition, edited by Vanessa Countryman, editor-in-chief of The George-Anne Statesboro Edition.

In just one year, Jill King went from a student who was forced to rethink her entire future to being a leader in her community and receiving the 2022 National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Georgia Young Leader Award.

In August 2020, King, who is from Statesboro, was away at college when she became ill and began enduring chronic pain. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a condition which can cause immense pain throughout the body, and render a person disabled. Just two months after starting her college journey, King returned home to be with her parents, both of whom are Eagle alumni. In January 2021, she enrolled at 91ɬ�� as a student with a disability.

That’s when she and her friends began building the foundation for an advocacy group for students with disabilities.

Within its first year of existence, the campus chapter grew to more than 40 student participants. It also began earning recognition for its work in offering help to others, noted King.

“We’ve got a lot of students and that means we’ve got a lot of disabled students who might not know we’re here and that there is something for them,” she said. “So really being acknowledged helps people who might need to see that we exist.”

While King is excited and humbled by the NAMI award, she said it’s more reflective of the group’s mission as a whole.

“None of us expected it to be this big this quickly,” she said. “We knew it was needed, but being received in the way it has is more than I could have asked for. Just being acknowledged for the work we do is always incredibly humbling, because of how personal it is for me.”

On top of being recognized by NAMI, King was also recently awarded the Rookie of the Year Award from the Social Health Network, an organization which promotes communication and leadership within the health care community.

A 91ɬ�� student is saving lives, and is now receiving national recognition for her work.

In May 2022, Dollar attended a gala in Los Angeles for Gift of Life, an organization supporting bone marrow transplants. Dollar has been an ambassador for the organization for years and is responsible for organizing events in the group’s name.

While there, she was surprised with the Steven Bochco Award, named after the late television writer and producer, who had leukemia.

The accomplishment is the culmination of hard work and passion for the cause. For Dollar, the journey was far from an easy one.

In middle school, Brianne Dollar fell off her bicycle. However, she remembers how lucky she felt when she found a $100 bill near the crash site.

From this point on, her pendulum between luck and bad luck began to swing with a wider arc.

Dollar grew up in Hinesville, Georgia. As a high school student, she was looking forward to attending college as an engineering student. During her first week of senior year, she came down with a case of strep throat.

In November 2017, she visited her second emergency room after fighting the same symptoms for months. By that time, she was already fearing what was making her sick. A call from the doctor confirmed those fears.

Tests showed she had leukemia, and some cells were found in her spine. Dollar spent nearly 120 days over four rounds in Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta undergoing intense chemotherapy.

“It would have been shorter, but I went into septic shock the last round,” Dollar said. “And then that was it for the first time.”

To her luck, they found a match for her. But along the way, complications with the donor arose, and they had to find a new donor. Even luckier, the proteins in her body matched many other donors.

Dollar was quickly paired with a new donor, and the timing couldn’t have been better.

“It was a week before my birthday,” Dollar laughed. “It was a very fun weekend, but not so fun prep week for that. We just started making sure that I was going to go for a transplant.”

The operation was conducted in February 2019. While the transplant was a success, it wasn’t without its complications. As a result, Dollar developed Graft versus Host Disease, where the transplant and the body fought. After months of additional treatments and recovery, Dollar learned she had completed her treatments.

In September 2019, she was told she could stop her immunotherapy, she could go out in public more often and didn’t need to wear a face mask.

“That was short-lived,” she quipped.

Dollar was given a few months of “normal life” before the world would mask up because of the pandemic.

That “lucky-unlucky” pendulum was swinging with every step.

When it came time to decide the next phase in her life, she spent no time picking a path. She knew it was time to attend college.

“It was like something I’d been waiting to do,” Dollar said. “It was kind of like that final thing that had kept being pushed off by cancer that I could finally take back. It was really hard for me to go back, but it was also very freeing to go back because I waited so long.”

She had her list of choices for schools, but she already knew where she wanted to go. In 2020, Dollar enrolled at 91ɬ�� as a biomedical engineering student.

As though the game of tetherball with luck couldn’t keep swinging, the beginning of her college career was more accommodating than she had planned for. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, courses went online. That turned out to be an advantage for Dollar. It allowed Dollar to take her courses while she worked on improving her limited mobility.

After a short while, she noticed she wasn’t as good at math as she used to be. It was time to switch majors, but she wasn’t leaving the medical field. Luckily, she found a program she loved and a field she could make an impact in.

“One of my friends died because he didn’t have a donor and they were waiting on one,” she said. “It has always hit me very close to home. It gives me a sense of being able to help them in a way and honor them.”

Dollar is continuing her work and has a presence on the Statesboro, Armstrong and Liberty campuses. Her involvement stretches from her own student organization, to being a member of the Student Government Association and other advocacy groups where she plays a leading role in helping others get the resources they need.

Soon after graduating, a 91ɬ�� graduate is receiving attention for her expertise and is being recognized for making an impact in her community.

“I’ve always been called ‘the mom’ of the group of my friends,” said Ashley Rutland, a recent Georgia Southern alumna. “I’m always the one taking care of everyone. I feel like it’s just what’s inside me. I grew up helping others, so why not do it for everyone?”

Rutland has always had the drive to make close connections with those who have disorders related to communication. Her younger sister has Down syndrome, and that spurred her passion to communicate and connect with those with special needs.

Rutland began volunteering with the Savannah Speech & Hearing Center in January of 2021. She committed more than 90 hours helping with community hearing screenings, fundraising, administrative duties, and scheduling other Georgia Southern volunteers.

“Most of the deaf people, myself included, feel kind of depressed,” signed Angellia Burnett, a volunteer assistant in 91ɬ��’s American Sign Language (ASL) course. “We miss a lot of things in life, because it has always been a struggle with communication.”

Burnett grew up deaf, and is the only person in her family who is deaf. Members of her family speak ASL, but she said many in the Deaf community continue to be left out of family conversations because not everyone will sign all of the time.

This leaves Deaf family members feeling isolated even within their own homes.

“Not everyone accepts my deafness,” Burnett signed. “They need to know Deaf culture. They need to accept that.”

One of the most effective ways of accepting someone is by understanding the challenges they face.

Over the past few years, the world has experienced a Deaf culture renaissance, where the inclusion of people who are deaf becomes more mainstream.

Recently, the film “CODA,” which stands for “children of deaf adults,” won the 2022 Academy Award for Best Picture. This brought Deaf culture further into the spotlight, opening many eyes into the lives of those with hearing impairments.

“What that means is it embraces the entire community,” said Dana Taylor, Ph.D., Georgia Southern adjunct professor and sign language interpreter. “It’s not isolating one group as being different. Individuals get to see the struggles and challenges and the triumphs that people experience.”

At Georgia Southern, a group of students is taking courses to grow the number of interpreters in their communities and their fields.

Each student comes to class with their own motivations to learn ASL. Some are learning sign language because they have people in their lives with hearing impairments or other communication disorders where sign can be advantageous. Others are there to develop their Sign skills as a professional tool.

“If I had a client who spoke ASL, I’d be able to communicate with them better or make them feel more comfortable,” said Ricki Botsford, speech pathology student. “I’ve learned a lot about how broad communication can be, because there are so many ways to communicate outside of the verbal option.”

When the students were asked if they had tried learning other languages like Spanish or French, every hand was raised. When asked if they stuck to learning them, all but a few went down.

So what makes Sign different?

“It’s a lot easier to integrate into every day,” said Adia Greer who’s studying to be an athletic trainer for Deaf athletes. “I can speak it verbally, but I can also sign it. I’ve picked up signing to my cat a lot. She doesn’t understand it, but it allows me to practice.”

While the students practice Sign with their pets and favorite TV shows, Burnett continues to come to class to help show her students the world they share, but not the one they see.

Georgia Southern has a network of Student Accessibility Resource Centers on the Statesboro and Savannah campuses providing interpreters for students who want to attend classes and interact with their environment, as well as many other resources for students who are hard of hearing. 

“The whole world needs to learn Sign,” Burnett signed. “I want to see people motivated to learn. I see a lot of Hearing people who are motivated to learn, and a lot of Deaf people that want to help make them successful. I’m really proud that I can help in that.”

91ɬ�� has chosen its 2016 Southern Orientation, Advisement, and Registration (SOAR) Team. SOAR Leaders help orient new students and their families to Georgia Southern during the summer SOAR sessions by serving as role models for new students, helping them register for classes, preparing them for college level academics and informing parents about the University’s services. Out of 122 students who applied for the coveted SOAR Leader position, 25 were selected based on their leadership potential, work ethic and ability to represent the University. Three students are returning for their second year as SOAR Leaders: Courtney Dyer, a senior psychology major from Dahlonega, Georgia; Abbey LaMee, a junior child and family development/therapeutic recreation major from Acworth, Georgia; and Tyler Wilson, a senior management major from Adrian, Georgia. These students helped select the 2016 SOAR Team, which represents more than 25 campus organizations, by trying to find the best individuals to represent the Georgia Southern student body. The juniors represented on the team are Doug Flott, a pre-business major from Brooklet, Georgia; Nick Hartney, an information technology major from Marietta, Georgia; Alec Joiner, a marketing/retail management major from Cordele, Georgia; Sydney Jordan, a pre-business major from Gray, Georgia; Marcus Joyner, an information technology major from Evans, Georgia; Megan King, an early childhood education major from Roswell, Georgia; Courtney Rorex, a journalism major from Austell, Georgia; Crystele Seya, a pre-business major from Lithonia, Georgia; Matthew Windham, a chemistry major from Cordele, Georgia; and Kiera Zellerer, a marketing major from Savannah, Georgia. Sophomores who were selected include Brandon Ashiedu, a mechanical engineering major from Douglasville, Georgia; Chandler Avery, a mechanical engineering major from Hoschton, Georgia; Josh Bailey, a chemistry major from Waycross, Georgia; Savannah Freeman, a pre-business major from Woodstock, Georgia; Charabele Louis-Jacques, a biology major from McDonough, Georgia; Daniel Marin, an international trade major from Woodstock, Georgia; Alexa Rushworth, a public relations major from Atlanta, Georgia; Kat Shuman, an English major from Reidsville, Georgia; Danielle Souza, a biology major from Londonderry, New Hampshire; and Emily Stephens, a pre-business major from Atlanta, Georgia. Freshmen selected include Moses Malloy, a mathematics major from Richmond Hill, Georgia, and Devin Thornton, a pre-business major from Lithonia, Georgia. 91ɬ��, a public Carnegie Doctoral/Research University founded in 1906, offers more than 125-degree programs serving more than 20,500 students. Through eight colleges, the University offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs built on more than a century of academic achievement. Georgia Southern is recognized for its student-centered and hands-on approach to education.