NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee High School Press Association is transferring its archives of awards, records and student achievement to Vanderbilt University after spending the last 60 years under the authority of the University of Tennessee‘s College of Communication.
Vanderbilt Student Communications will now direct THSPA after four years of successive growth by its own organization, the Middle Tennessee Scholastic Press Association. MTSPA, which was created by VSC Director Chris Carroll in 2002, will be folded into the Tennessee High School Press Association to form one organization and keep THSPA’s records that stretch to the 1940s.
“I think it’s really a source of pride for Vanderbilt that now the university is home to the Tennessee High School Press Association,” Carroll said.
H.L. Hall, who has been involved with student journalism for nearly 40 years as a high school teacher in Missouri and is nationally recognized in the field, will serve as executive director of the new THSPA. He served in a similar capacity for the last three years with the Middle Tennessee Scholastic Press Association.
Under Hall’s direction, attendance for the association’s annual student media workshop has increased each year, topping more than 600 students last spring. The workshop is conducted on campus during Vanderbilt’s spring break.
For the most recent workshop, the MTSPA membership had grown to 50 schools and 74 memberships, with each competing category such as newspaper, yearbook or broadcast counting as a separate membership. That number should increase now that the organization represents the entire state as the THSPA.
“I’m excited because it’s a 60-year-old organization that we can continue to operate here at Vanderbilt,” Hall said. “Because it’s a more centralized location than Knoxville, hopefully we’ll pick up some members that we haven’t had before.”
Hall retired to Hendersonville in 1999 after spending 38 years as a teacher in Kansas and Missouri, including 26 years advising the school newspaper and yearbook at Kirkwood High School just outside St. Louis, Mo. The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund in 1982 named him the national Newspaper Adviser of the Year and in 1995 the Journalism Education Association named him the first recipient of the national Yearbook Adviser of the Year award.
The National Scholastic Press Association established the H.L. Hall Fellowship for Yearbook Advisers in 1996, which awards a $500 fellowship to a qualifying teacher for a credit-bearing university or college-based summer course in advising school media. Hall, who will use a VSC office in the Sarratt Student Center, also is the author of four journalism books that are used in high school classrooms across the country.
“He’s a marquee player. Everybody in scholastic journalism knows who H.L. Hall is,” Carroll said. “He’s a frequent facilitator of consulting and workshops. He’s always traveling – the busiest retired guy you’ve ever met.”
The THSPA’s new website is already up and running at www.tennpress.org, where lists of award winners, tips for advisers and other information are available. Schools or individuals interested in signing up for next year’s workshop, scheduled for March 6, 2007, can log on to register their choice from approximately 40 sessions.
Hall also would like to eventually offer regional workshops in cities such as Chattanooga, Memphis and Knoxville through the THSPA.
“I think that would grow our membership even more, if we could offer them services in their area,” Hall said. “That’s something I hope we can do in the future.”
Vanderbilt Student Communications is affiliated with the university but is legally an independent, nonprofit corporation set up in 1967. It reports to its own independent board of directors comprised of three faculty members and five students.
“VSC is a big partnership with Vanderbilt,” Carroll said. “Anything we can do that makes Vanderbilt better is better for us, too.”
Media contact: Todd Vessel, (615) 322-NEWS
todd.vessel@vanderbilt.edu