The Festival is organized under the direction of the BEA Board of Directors. The BEA Festival Committee acts on behalf of the Board organizing each year's competition and Festival Sessions. The Committee functions with a Chair, the Festival Committee and the Chair, appointed by the Board of Directors, directs the activities in planning and executing the Festival. Members of the committee participate and supervise overall planning: juried entries, organizing the awards presentations, the exhibition of winning presentations and related Festival Workshops. Festival subcommittees are organized to conduct specific competitions. Each competition is headed by a Competition Chair. Current Festival Subcommittees include: Radio and Audio Media, Production Aesthetics & Criticism, Documentary, News, Interactive Media, Communication Technology, Student Media Advisors, Small and 2 Year Colleges, and Writing. These Competition Chairs are nominated by the BEA Divisions Chairs and work as a part of the Festival Committee.
       The objective of the BEA Festival is to provide a national refereed exhibition of faculty creative activities and a national showcase for our students' work. Exhibition includes recognition, showcase and awards presentations at the international BEA Annual Convention as well as on-line at the BEA Web Site.

2009 BEA Festival of Media Arts

Festival Chair
Vic Costello
Elon University
vcostello@elon.edu

Festival Competition Chairs

Faculty Audio Competition
Melanie Stone
Georgia Southern University
mstone@georgiasouthern.edu

Student Audio Competition
Tony DeMars
University of Houston-Clear Lake
demars@uhcl.edu

Faculty Interactive Multimedia Competition
Mary Schaffer
California State University-Northridge
mary.c.schaffer@csun.edu

Student Multimedia Competition
Richard Cawood
University of Cincinnati
richard.cawood@uc.edu

Faculty Scriptwriting Competition
Dennis Conway
Marist College
dennis.conway@marist.edu

Student Scriptwriting Competition
Michael McAlexander
Frostburg State University
mcmcalexander@frostburg.edu

Fred Jones
Southeast Missouri State University
fjones@semo.edu

Faculty Video Competition
Lowell Briggs
York College of Pennsylvania
lbriggs@ycp.edu

Student Video Competition
Warren Koch
Azusa Pacific University
wkoch@apu.edu

Faculty and Student News Competitions
Ken Fischer
University of Oklahoma
kfischer@ou.edu

Two-Year and Small Colleges Competition
Tom McDonnell
Parkland College
tmcdonnell@parkland.edu

Faculty Documentary Competition
Jay Rosenstein
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
jrosenst@uiuc.edu

Student Documentary Competition
Ralph Beliveau
University of Oklahoma
beliveau@ou.edu

Festival Committee
In addition to the Festival Competition Chairs the Festival Committee includes: Steve Anderson, James Madison University; Robert Avery, University of Utah; Louise Benjamin, University of Georgia; Dennis Conway, Marist; Jan Dates, Howard University; Bill Davie, University of Louisiana; Pam Doyle, University of Alabama; Todd Evans, Drake University; Joe Foote, University of Oklahoma; Don Godfrey, Arizona State University; Rustin Greene, James Madison University; Ken Harwood, University of Houston; Price Hicks, emeritus, ATAS Foundation; Scott Hodgson, University of Oklahoma; Robert Jacobs, Bradley University; Evan Johnson, University of Wisconsin-River Falls; Andy Lapham, United Kingdom; Thomas McHardy, James Madison University; Patricia Phalen, George Washington University; Gary Wade, Drake University; Sonja Williams, Howard University; John Woody, James Madison University.

Review Board
Mary Beadle, John Carroll University; D'Artagnan Bebel, KRIV; Barbara Cloud, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; John Craft, Arizona State University; Michael Keith, Boston College; Judi Moore Latta, Howard University; Elizabeth Leebron, Temple University; Larry Lichty, Northwestern University; Paula Matabane, Howard University; Fran Matera, Arizona State University; Norm Medoff, North Arizona University; Nikos Metallinos, Concordia University; Michael Monty, Seneca College; Mike Murray, University of Missouri, St. Louis; Peter Orlik, Central Michigan University; David Reese, John Carroll University; William Slater, University of Nevada, Reno; Max Utsler, University of Kansas; Herbert Zettl, San Francisco State University.

The Review Process
      Working with the Festival Chair, Festival Committee and the Competition Chairs, the Review Board serves much like an Editorial Board would for a scholarly refereed journal. The Review Board constitutes a large group of nationally recognized professionals and professors, who are organized into panels, which which assist in judging individual full time faculty entries in specific categories. This blind review focuses on the following criteria: professionalism, the use of aesthetic and/or creative elements, sense of structure and timing, production values, technical merit and overall contributions to the discipline in both form and substance. The Festival Committee targets an acceptance award rate of twenty-percent within full time faculty awards.

Faculty Award Categories
Awards Presented are as follows:
* BEA Award of Excellence: these awards connote superior quality work, parallel in idea to research accepted for publication in a refereed journal.
* BEA Best of Competition: these awards are selected from within each competitive category.
* Best of the BEA Festival: this award is selected from among the "Best of the Competition."
Student Award Categories: Student award categories are currently established by the specific competition. They are generally designated as first, second, and third place awards.