For the first time ever, the Slippery Rock University Media Hall of Fame recently named two heavily-involved students as recipients of its Mike McHugh Undergrad Award for Excellence.
Both digital media production majors, Tom Fabian and Logan Snyder have each taken on a large workload in assisting with organizations in the university’s department of communication.
Fabian has acted as the president of WSRU-TV and the multimedia editor of The Rocket. With the former, he’s worked as the executive and technical director and the executive producer of the bi-weekly live show “Around the Rock.” His behind-the-scenes involvement has allowed him to work as a liaison between the television station and the newspaper.
Also having been president of the Film Society, he watched the club move from the English department to the communication sector. He reworked the club to allow it to attend film festivals, created an executive board and helped in getting new equipment. Fabian was also elected as the secretary of the communication honorary Lambda Pi Eta last spring.
With time management, he revealed he didn’t find a true balance until this year. Throughout the process, he learned about delegation and reliance on others.
“Leadership and having these roles isn’t, ‘I tell you ‘x, y, z” and that’s it,” he said. “You have to understand people and their strengths and weaknesses. Helping people grow and play to their strengths has helped our organizations so much more.”
Snyder transferred to SRU two years ago from Robert Morris University, where she was a pre-med major. Like Fabian, she has worked with both WSRU-TV and The Rocket. She scripted, shot-planned and worked with anchors for the station’s sports show while coordinating multimedia with the newspaper. Her connection with Rock Athletics has helped her schedule interviews with coaches and players for each medium.
Last summer, each of the two had experiences that will help in professional settings. Snyder interned with the Pittsburgh Penguins, working beneath the team’s Director of Production Operations, assisting in the filming and editing of game and web elements. Fabian was selected as one of four students to travel to China to film a documentary that studied sustainability and modernization in rural ethnic villages. He will leave for San Diego on April 12 to present the movie at a conference.
Snyder said that, with both her work at the school and her internship as a student ambassador for the Sustainable Enterprise Accelerator, she’s learned valuable lessons such as how to deal with deadlines and ensuring good quality of work.
“In the real world, you don’t really get second chances very often,” she said. “You have to do something and you have to get it done well.”
While Snyder will graduate at the end of this semester, Fabian will receive his degree in August, after fulfilling his internship requirement. He’s applied for opportunities with both the Fred Young Hearst Television Producing Fellowship and WTOV-TV in Steubenville, Ohio.
Of course, both Fabian and Snyder were happy in learning of their upcoming induction at next season’s Homecoming.
“It’s nice to be recognized for something,” Fabian said. “Because it’s not often when you’re heading an organization like Film Society or WRSU-TV that someone turns around and says, ‘Hey, good job.’ Because we’re all hectic and frantic and trying to figure out what we’re doing in general.”
Said Snyder, “Just to know that I’ve left some kind of impression on the faculty here that they would nominate me for that or even vote for me to get it, it’s been a great thing.”
