Chavez honored with Bingham Award.

NCEW FOUNDATION NAMED Ramon Chavez, associate professor of journalism and director of the office of student diversity at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Barry Bingham Sr. Fellow for 1999. He was presented with the award at a dinner meeting at Denver Natural History Museum September 16 during the 53rd annual convention.

Presented annually since 1990, NCEW Foundation presents the Bingham award to a journalism educator dedicated to recruiting minority students and helping them prepare for careers in journalism. The fellowship honors the late Mr. Bingham, publisher of The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, who was a strong advocate of civil rights and who as an editor worked to attract minority students into the newspaper business.

"Professor Chavez was chosen for his dedication to recruiting, teaching, mentoring, and retaining minority students at the University of Colorado at Boulder," said Chuck Stokes, NCEW Foundation president and editorial/public affairs director of WXYZ-TV in Detroit. "Throughout his newspaper and education careers, he has been a strong advocate for diversity and has helped hundreds of minority students 'gain a foothold' in the newspaper profession."

As director of the office of student diversity since it was created in January, 1993, he is responsible for the recruitment, retention, and placement of ethnic/racial minority students. He also works to develop school policies regarding diversity issues that impact faculty/staff hiring, undergraduate and graduate curricula, and student development.

This past summer he was education director for the Unity '99 Student Campus, an educational program that brought together 51 of the top minority college journalism students from across the nation for a series of seminars and workshops conducted in conjunction with the Unity '99 national convention in Seattle. He previously coordinated and taught a one-week intensive journalism program for college-age minority students at three conventions of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Professor Chavez was also the supervisor and principal instructor for two groups of students under the Summer High School Journalism Development Program, conducted under the auspices of the University of Colorado at Boulder. One group of students was comprised of low-income, minority students from the Denver/Boulder metropolitan area while the second set of students were American Indian students from throughout the West and Mid-West.

He joined the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder in August, 1991, after newspaper assignments at The Miami Herald, Albuquerque Tribune, and El Paso Herald-Post. He has a BA in journalism from Texas Tech University and an MA in mass communications from the University of Washington.