Ken Nordin was one of us – similar to many members of CMA.

He taught at a small, liberal arts institution, Benedictine University, in Lisle, Ill., undergraduate enrollment about 2,600. There, he advised The Candor, the award-winning, weekly student newspaper. He served as a professor of communication arts and was active in the Illinois College Press Association.

He was a former Navy Seal. He was a good person, mild mannered, and fun to talk to, with a quiet sense of humor, according to various advisers who knew Nordin.

And he was in shape. He loved to jog. He ran numerous marathons and competed in various triathlons. He led the morning run at national CMA conventions.

On Feb. 3, 2005, though, he stopped running. His heart gave out. Nordin, a long-time CMA member, died of a heart attack.

When he died, Nordin was the chairman of CMA’s Research Committee. He had attended CMA conventions religiously and was well respected by his CMA peers.

How well respected? When he died two years ago, the story on the College Media Advisers Web site garnered more than 2,400 hits.

Naturally, then, CMA decided to honor him for his service to the organization and remember him as an exceptional adviser and, at least to some, a dear friend.

That’s how the Ken Nordin Award for College Media Research was born. The idea was to sponsor a competitive, peer-reviewed research paper session during fall CMA conventions. The top paper receives the aptly titled Ken Nordin Award. The author of the top paper gets a plaque and a chance to have the paper published in College Media Review, CMA’s flagship publication.

The deadline to submit a paper for consideration for the Nordin Award will be posted on this page each year, along with submission instructions and guidelines. Papers can be written on any research topic related to college media. The research may be qualitative or quantitative, but it must deal with college media.

Possible research areas include:

• Case studies of student media  
• Analysis of student media coverage
• Audience analysis
• Pedagogy for student media coursework
• Converging media for student media   
• Independence and student media    
• Advisers’ roles
• Financial aspects of college media.

As you can see, CMA leaves a lot of leeway for the research. In fact, graduate students are invited and encouraged to submit papers as well. Authors will be notified if their papers have been accepted.  Papers should include a title page that has the author’s name, school and e-mail address. The subsequent pages should not have the author’s name in headers or footers to allow for blind review.

Papers should be no more than 25 pages long, excluding end notes.

The only thing needed to keep the competition running – we're guessing Ken would have liked that choice of words – is your papers.