The Diamond Award, Temple University’s Student Affairs’ most prestigious honor for undergraduate students, is awarded annually to changemakers on campus. Awardees are expected to exhibit standout academic, service and leadership qualities. This year, three Klein College of Media and Communication students earned the prize. Siani Colón ‘20, Kenneth Cooper ‘20 and Max Eagle ‘20 were recognized as having left a marked impact on the university and its surrounding communities.
Siani Colón graduated with a BA in journalism in spring 2020. She gained executive board leadership experience at Klein as the engagement and community outreach coordinator for the student-led Latinx Media Association. Throughout her time at Temple, she was also involved in SONKU, Feminist Alliance, The Temple News and Asociacion de Estudiantes Latinos, and she currently works with Tacony Creek Park as a park keeper. Colón has worked with the community-driven news initiative Kensington Voice since 2019 and is a full-time reporting fellow for the publication. She was initially unsure whether she qualified for a Diamond Award, but drew courage to apply because an unknown supporter nominated her for the award. Now that she’s a recipient, she has truly internalized that change can be an individual effort, saying that “all it takes is one person.”
Kenneth Cooper is a spring 2020 journalism and political science graduate. He was the president of the Temple Association of Black Journalists (TABJ) and an anchor and reporter for Temple University Television’s weekly news broadcast Temple Update. Cooper’s real-world experience with news organizations is varied, interning at FOX 29, NBC Sports Philadelphia and CNN's New York location, The Associated Press as an election night stringer and NBC News/ MSNBC as an assignment desk fellow. Cooper was inspired to get involved on campus once he noticed the lack of diversity among students in the journalism department. Through TABJ, he hoped to provide freshmen with a network of support and advice from upperclassmen, giving everyone “a seat at the table” and forging a sense of community.
Max Eagle graduated from the Communication Studies Program in spring 2020 and served as the student director of the Communication Studies Program. His time as president of Temple’s chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communication Association’s honors fraternity, allowed him to bring new programming and educational efforts to the department. Although Eagle applied to the award unsuccessfully last year, he felt that another year of preparation gave him more insight and growth. He says that his proudest achievement as a student director is launching initiatives through the Communication Studies Program and Lambda Pi Eta that he wished were available to him as a freshman.
Congratulations, Owls!