The CMA election for President-Elect and VP for Member Training ended April 10 at 5 pm ET. The run-off election for VP for Member Support ended April 19 at 5 pm ET. Thank you to all the members who voted.

Below are the full results:

Initial Election
President-Elect
Hillary Warren 117 votes (100%)

Vice President for Member Support
Matt Bird-Meyer – 55 votes (47.83%)
Andrea Lewis – 34 votes (29.57%)
Jean Norman – 26 votes (22.61%)

Vice President for Member Training
Bill DiNome – 66 votes (56.41%)
Julie Lewis – 51 votes (43.59%)

Run-off Election
Vice President for Member Support
Matt Bird-Meyer – 66 votes (68.75%)
Andrea Lewis – 30 votes (31.25%)

Congratulations to Hillary Warren, Matt Bird-Meyer and Bill DiNome on their board positions. Their bios and goals can be found at the bottom of this page.

Bylaw revisions were also part of the ballot. The updated bylaws can be found on the CMA website.

Below are the full results:

Bylaw Amendment Approval of Article IV, Section 2

Yes (approve amendment) – 100 votes (87.72%)
No (reject amendment) – 14 votes (12.28%)

The president-elect shall be elected by the membership at large to serve a one-year term in odd-numbered years. The two vice presidents shall be elected by the membership at large to serve two-year terms beginning in odd-numbered years. The president-elect and vice presidents may not succeed themselves. The president-elect succeeds to the position of president to serve a one-year term in even-numbered years. The president may not succeed themselves. To qualify for president-elect, candidates must have been adviser members for five years. Vice presidential candidates must have been adviser members for three years.

Bylaw Amendment Approval of Article IV, Section 3

Yes (approve amendment) – 104 votes (88.14%)
No (reject amendment) – 14 votes (11.86%)

The secretary and treasurer shall be elected by the membership at large to serve two-year terms beginning in even-numbered years. Candidates must have been an adviser CMA member for at least two years. The treasurer and secretary may serve no more than two full terms in the same position.

Bylaw Amendment Approval of Article VII, Section 1

Yes (approve amendment) – 116 votes (98.31%)
No (reject amendment) – 2 votes (1.69%)

The standing committees of CMA are the: Awards Committee, Bylaws Committee, Contest Committee, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Education/Certification Committee, Elections Committee, Finance Committee, First Amendment Advocacy Committee, John A. Boyd Hall of Fame Award Committee, Membership Committee.

New Officers

It’s an honor to be considered for CMA President-Elect and I appreciate the trust my colleagues have placed in me over the past several years.

I joined CMA in 2002, just after starting as the adviser of T&C Media at Otterbein University in Westerville, OH. Since joining, I have served on the Hall of Fame committee, the Bylaws committee, the Code of Ethics revision committee. I served as the New York convention chair in 2017 and started the ongoing relationship with the Big East Conference that provides an outstanding hands-on opportunity for our students. I started the CMA assessment training workshops with a convention preconference and continue to offer the workshop as part of CMA’s summer workshop series.

I currently serve as the CMA Vice President for Member Support. I believe that everything we do at CMA is member support—that’s the whole point of the organization, serving college media by supporting advisers and their students. Since joining the Board, my main priority has been to improve the CMA’s connection with advisers at every level of the industry and to provide opportunities that all members can access. This has included supporting a listserv for members at faith-based schools, offering affordable summer workshops and expanding categories in contests to give more programs a fair chance. I have also worked with the board to create the new website, which is key to offering resources for members.

As you know, CMA is facing significant challenges. College media has faced cuts in institutional support and advertising revenue—and that makes it harder to keep and expand our membership. CMA must change to support college media as it exists today, in all the places it exists today.

If elected CMA president, my priorities will be

• Reviewing all aspects of CMA operations for efficiency and value. Every member dollar CMA spends must be clearly connected to serving members and we should seek collaborations that allow us to share costs while preserving benefits.
• Establishing a clear leadership development process. Our members know how to run non-profit organizations; we do it for a living. Members deserve more opportunities to lead, make decisions and guide the organization. For CMA to grow, we need everyone.
• Balancing financial realities with the obligation to serve all members. Conventions are necessary for CMA’s financial health, but they don’t serve more than half our members. Members deserve opportunities and resources whether or not they can travel.

If you have read this far, thank you. Regardless of the election, I hope to continue to support CMA’s members—you are what has made my career and my service meaningful.

Please briefly describe your experience in journalism and media: Prior to teaching, I worked at five different weekly and daily newspapers in the Kansas City area for 11 years. During that time, I was fortunate to experience a wide range of responsibilities and beats– editor-in-chief and sports reporter/editor, and covered local schools, business, city and county government, and courts. While working for the Lee’s Summit Journal as its city beat reporter, I ran a biweekly alternative newspaper in Warrensburg for three years. Please briefly describe your experience in college media advising: I returned to school in 2008 to pursue my master’s degree at the University of Central Missouri. As I finished, the adviser to the student newspaper retired. They asked if I would stick around to teach and advise starting in 2012. After earning my doctorate, my family and I moved to Michigan in 2019 where I continue to teach journalism and advise the student newspaper at Monroe County Community College.

Please briefly describe your leadership experience within CMA and/or other similar organizations: I have served as chair of the CMA Membership Committee since 2021. We have accomplished quite a bit in a short amount of time. I think my leadership style centers on being a good listener who leads by consensus. During my time on the committee, I also assisted the CMA leadership in preparing an RFP for redesigning the organization’s website. I also led a confab on fundraising to support student media. Back in Missouri, I was active with the Missouri College Media Association, participating in board meetings to help improve student contest categories, tweak the process for adviser of the year award, and voted to reduce membership costs. I also served as the SPJ Region 7 treasurer, and I continue to serve as a regular paper reviewer for AEJMC (participatory journalism, electronic news and newspaper and online divisions).

Please briefly describe your administrative experience; for example, your work with budgets, contracts, personnel, legal issues, event programming, etc.: As the owner and editor of the Warrensburg Free Press, I managed the budget and hired the staff. As editor of the Lee’s Summit Tribune, I worked with the publisher to manage the newsroom budget and wasalso responsible for hiring staff. While serving as adviser to the student newspaper at UCM, I was responsible for the student publication budget and reporting our financial health to the Student Publications Board. I have the same responsibility at MCCC, but the operation is much smaller. We rely less on advertising and more on college funding. Back at UCM, I reconstituted the campus SPJ chapter, and as treasurer of SPJ’s Region 7, I worked with the regional coordinator to bring the annual conference to our campus.

Please describe the biggest challenge facing college media, then explain how it might be addressed by CMA: Enrollment is down across the country. It does not help that funding and marketing efforts seldom hype careers in the media as interest in the humanities has been declining for some time. As advisers and journalism professors, I know many of us find that the unspoken part of our jobs is to continually recruit to fill the newsroom and the classroom. This effort seems to get harder and harder every year. It’s especially disheartening when our efforts result in a handful of new recruits. When our classes fail to make and when our news staff grow thinner, it becomes easier for administrators to make the case to shelve classes and programs. I wish I knew the solution, but I know that CMA is full of engaged colleagues who share this reality. I found that one of the greatest benefits of membership in CMA is its advocacy and outreach. I’ve seen this firsthand on the Membership Committee when we sought solutions for helping advisers from faith-based schools as they deal with unique free speech issues. They needed a safe outlet to share their experiences and the Membership Committee helped by creating an inclusive listserv for them and other members.

Please list the three priority goals you would hope to see achieved during your term as a CMA officer: First, I think we must continue the progress we have made over the past couple of years. The Membership Committee helped identify the need for a redesigned website, a faith-based listserv, a confab on fundraising, a new grant to help offset the cost to bring students to the conference in NYC, a new Pinnacle award for faith-based reporting, and a coordinated approach to recruiting new members. We must continue to identify ways that members find value in joining and remaining members of CMA. Second, we must listen to and work with the membership. We need to identify our members’ needs and find ways to meet those needs. And we must find ways to encourage more engagement through small groups and communication among the standing committees. Third, we have a new website. Now we need to find ways to fully utilize it. I know much work has gone into identifying outdated files and documents. Let’s refresh those tip sheets and resources and landing pages dedicated to new members. Finally, one way to engage with our membership and identify needs and share ideas about our new website is to bring back a regular newsletter. I think with a good plan, we can have a sustainable, useful and enjoyable newsletter

Please briefly describe your experience in journalism and media:

My experience in media started in 1984 as a staff copywriter for major New York-based book publishers (Berkley-Putnam, St. Martin’s Press) then as a freelance writer for a range of publishers, advertising agencies, magazines and newspapers. Much of my output was advertising copy, feature articles, essays and reviews. As copy chief at St. Martin’s, I was also responsible for hiring and directing freelance copywriters and assisting in conceiving marketing strategies and was awarded two certificates for distinction in creativity in copywriting by Art Direction magazine (1989). 

After moving to North Carolina in 1990, I spent the next 10 years as a freelance writer and editor. I was the chief contributing editor and assistant designer for The Beat, a monthly magazine (18,000 circ.), while also writing programs for theater and music festivals, advertising copy, concert and restaurant reviews, radio scripts, and feature articles for agencies and magazines in North Carolina, San Francisco and New York. I co-authored a travel guide to NC’s Southeast Coast for five annual editions, often contributing original photography as well. In the mid-1990s, I wrote three genre westerns published under a pseudonym for Jove Press (an imprint of Berkeley-Putnam). I have since published shorts stories and poetry in a few unknown or disreputable literary journals.

The Encyclopedia of North Carolina (U Chapel Hill Press, 2006) published 18 of my articles about the natural and cultural history of the state. 

In 1993 I was recruited by WHQR-91.3 FM, the NPR affiliate in Wilmington, NC. For two years I did a variety of jobs: announcing for a daily morning show, volunteer coordination, designing and publishing the monthly program guide and writing original features and interviews, and coordinating special events. There I learned basic HTML to help launch the station’s first website in 1995. I remain an active volunteer and chaired their Community Advisory Board for two years.

In 1997 I earned an MFA in creative writing, which qualified me to be hired as UNCW’s first student media adviser.

Please briefly describe your experience in college media advising:

Now in my 25^th year at UNCW, I have advised student media organizations that publish campus news (now online only), a literary magazine, TV news and sketch comedy, podcasts, film and photography. I am the program’s budget authority and a non-voting member of our Student Media Board. Throughout the years, I have designed and delivered a wide variety of trainings, including online asynchronous modules, while playing major roles in retreats, conference travel, contest entries, spending, RFPs for print contracts, and assisting in the design of two office suites housing our program. Each year I introduce new editors to accessing the analytics for their respective websites. As an administrative user of the Campus Labs event platform, I assist student organizations in leveraging the platform’s functions, such as event marketing, member recruitment, attendance tracking and polling. 

Please briefly describe your leadership experience within CMA and/or other similar organizations:

Becoming a member of the College Media Association in 1998, I found a refuge and invaluable resource for someone then new to advising. Over the years I’ve volunteered for the Communication committee and helped copyedit the College Media Review. I have been a member of the First Amendment Advocacy Committee for the past couple of years and assisted with one investigation.

I was a member of SUN (Southern University Newspapers) from 2001 to its closing in 2017, serving as vice-president 2013–2015. I coordinated their contests for three years, and hosted a SUN conference at UNCW in 2015.

Please briefly describe your administrative experience; for example, your work with budgets, contracts, personnel, legal issues, event programming, etc.:

UNCW’s student media program is of a modest size, with an annual budget of nearly $170K. As budget authority, I oversee the entire budget process, all spending and revenue; I initiate PO requests, RFPs (including for print contracts for our newspaper’s print edition until 2019) and IT applications for off-campus web services. I manage the advertising for the Seahawk newspaper which today brings in a fraction of the revenue it earned 20 years ago. I advise the Student Media Board on all issues that come before it, including personnel, legal and ethical issues, marketing and programming, and provide monthly budget reports, minutes and agenda. I oversee a payroll of 35 students who work during the academic year. For seven years I hired and supervised a graduate assistant we well. 

Please describe the biggest challenge facing college media, then explain how it might be addressed by CMA:

Focusing specifically on this election bid, the greatest, most fundamental challenge facing college media is the need for reliable, circumspect advising that is well-informed, current and continuous across academic years. This need is precisely what CMA is conceived to address. The adviser training program, focused on serving the needs of new advisers and honing the skills of experienced advisers, stands at the vanguard of meeting this challenge.

Please list the three priority goals you would hope to see achieved during your term as a CMA officer:

As VP for member training, I propose to:

1. Connect new advisers to veteran advisers by establishing periodic online open sessions and topic-focused roundtables, and the creation of an “adviser bureau” offering individualized mentoring with experienced advisers.

2. Build upon the successes of previous VPs by expanding asynchronous adviser training:

• Begin by evaluating the effectiveness of existing trainings in all formats and polling membership about needed changes.
• Explore the viability of creating new elective trainings to include modules specific to media such as magazines (literary and general interest), radio, TV, podcasting and film. Make all such trainings available in synchronous and asynchronous settings.

3. Evaluate live training presentations at conferences to maintain effectiveness and relevance.