By: Cayden Hartman
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — During the fall, members of the University of Arkansas Honors College produced an award-winning video to promote themselves and the building where they are located.
The Gearhart Hall tour video, which was posted to the college’s YouTube channel at the beginning of September, won two titles, gold and silver, in the 16th Annual Davey Awards.
According to its website, The Davey Awards seeks to honor creators who derive the value of a particular work through their big ideas rather than budgets.
The competition is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts.
According to a list of winners, the Honors College video won gold in the Online Film & Video – Infomercial category and silver in the Craft – Best Use of Humor category.
Honors College Dean Lynda Coon makes a cameo in the video as she guides viewers through a tour of Gearhart Hall.
Coon said she is happy to receive recognition for a project to which she contributed her likeness
“It’s always great to get national recognition especially during such weird times. At least the feedback I’ve gotten the people enjoyed having humor and kind of making the weird social distance mask video work,” Coon said.
Along with a look around the building, Coon gives an introduction to various faculty members from around the Honors College and a look at upcoming events.
Kendall Curlee, the Honors College director of communications, said that plans to produce a tour video were in the works before the pandemic.
“We had actually planned for a while to do a tour of Gearhart Hall with Dean Coon leading it,” Curlee said.
The original plan was to showcase daily life of those going to class in Gearhart, Curlee said.
“We were gonna show the classes going on, the vibrant energy and activity of the students and totally involve them,” Curlee said.
The original plan to produce the video earlier last semester was shelved following the arrival of the coronavirus in Arkansas. Following that, the department was hoping to produce the video after the pandemic, Curlee said.
The Honors College recruitment team reached out to Curlee to see if they could film a tour video of Gearhart that they could show to perspective students since they could not give physical tours.
Curlee said they tweaked the original video plan to fit this goal.
“We went back to the script and reworked it a little bit so that we could do it in a different way, so we went ahead and played up that we were carrying on in a pandemic,” Curlee said.
The video was produced through a partnership between the Honors College and University Relations.