Cindy Todd named Medal of Merit winner

The Journalism Education Association has chosen Cindy Todd of Austin, Texas, as a 2013 Medal of Merit award winner. This award is presented to JEA members who have made significant contributions to scholastic journalism.

Todd has advised the yearbook at Westlake High School in Austin for the past 14 years, after eight years’ advising at Randall High School in Amarillo, Texas. The list of honors her students have won include a wide range of the nation’s top awards: two National Pacemakers and seven Pacemaker Finalists from the National Scholastic Press Association, three Gold Crowns from Columbia Scholastic Press Association, six NSPA Picture of the Year winners, and many other individual and staff awards.

Her personal honors include being named JEA’s 2012 H.L. Hall National Yearbook Adviser of the Year and the Max Haddick Texas High School Journalism Teacher of the Year. Todd also has received a Gold Key from CSPA and the Edith Fox King Award from Interscholastic League Press Conference in Texas.

She spends most of her summers teaching workshops across the nation. As Deanne Brown, advising colleague from Westlake, wrote, “I keep telling her she needs to cut back and give herself a bit of a break, but for her, this is a calling.”

She has also found time to be a member of the JEA Awards committee, judge Write-offs and speak at state and national conventions.

Todd will receive the Medal of Merit award Nov. 16 during the JEA/NSPA Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Boston.

The Journalism Education Association Inc., is the only independent national scholastic journalism organization for teachers and media advisers. It is headquartered at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan.