CMA, the nation’s largest organization dedicated to serving collegiate media advisers, annually presents its Distinguished Adviser Awards to professionals who are CMA members with more than five years of experience in college student media advising with distinguished service in a particular area and are advisers when they are nominated.

Buck will be honored as a college newspaper adviser in the four-year university category during an awards ceremony at the 2022 CMA/Associated Collegiate Press/Society of Professional Journalists Fall National College Media Convention Oct. 27-30 in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Ecaterina “Kate” Stepaniuc, a former Southeast faculty member and co-advisor to the Arrow last spring, nominated Buck for the honor. Several other colleagues and students wrote letters supporting her nomination.

“She inspires her students, listens to them, challenges them, but above all – loves them dearly,” Stepaniuc wrote in her letter of nomination. “She helps them become successful professionals and outstanding people. Isn’t this what higher education is destined to do? Dr. Buck fully embodies the tremendous role an adviser has in the life of a student.”

Mia Pohlman, a content advisor to the Arrow and magazines editor with rustmedia, wrote, “She is truly the best at tough love, helping students feel simultaneously challenged and supported.”

Buck reflected on those words, saying “I thought that was a wonderful compliment.”

“She expects nothing short of greatness from her students,” Pohlman wrote. “I have witnessed the high expectations she holds for her students, the challenging questions she asks of them and the love she pours into the organization she was the editor of during her own undergraduate years.”

Buck called her selection for the award “amazing. I’m just so grateful that my peers thought enough of me to name me a distinguished advisor.

“I am very honored to receive this award,” she continued. “I have been a member of the College Media Association since 2011 and have seen the caliber of winners of this award. So being selected is a true honor.”

She says she views the advisor’s role as one who continually seeks opportunities to explore new mediums and urges students to follow their passions.

“To see students really pursue their interests, that’s special,” she said. “I really try to give students room to innovate. It’s a constant application of trying new things.”

She is exceedingly proud of the new Arrow email newsletter launched in January that is distributed twice weekly to Southeast students, faculty and staff. The writing is pithy, quirky and free-spirited, and analytics show it is quickly gaining traction.

“It is a modern form of news delivery,” she said.

She says her greatest satisfaction as the Arrow adviser comes in seeing the roles her former students take on after graduation across the communications industry.

“Many people mistakenly believe journalism majors only want to work for media organizations,” Buck said. But both former Arrow and mass communications students work “in corporate America, non-profit organizations, government agencies and globally. We train them to use their skills professionally” across a breadth of employment sectors.

Buck, who serves as Southeast’s multimedia journalism coordinator, came to the University in 2001. She helped pioneer a new multimedia curriculum in 2009. Two years later, she became advisor to the Arrow. That same year, a new partnership with Rust Communications revised the Arrow’s structure, and the Southeast Missourian began providing oversight of the Arrow’s print publication and a more robust student-produced news website. The evolution continued with a new, professional workspace in the Rust Center for Media opening in 2016 at 325 Broadway, allowing the Arrow and its students to continue growing. Their work and results have been reflected in numerous awards and recognitions over the past several years.

The partnership with the Southeast Missourian “has ensured we are raising the bar,” Buck said.  “We have a broader group of people in place, and that’s why it has improved so much.”

Jon Rust, publisher of the Southeast Missourian and president of Rust Communications, said, “Tamara is an outstanding educator, who pours her heart into her students, mentoring them with pride, care and love. And it shows in how they respond to her mentorship, developing skills – and achieving heights -- many might not have dreamed before working with her.

“Over the years, Tamara has also been at the center of breaking down the silos of journalism education and empowering students within all types of new media -- from print to podcasts, video to email newsletters,” he continued. “And she does it all with a keen sense of nurturing media professionals who are ethically grounded and understanding of the power and influence they wield as creators of the first draft of history.”

Rhonda Weller-Stilson, dean of the Holland College of Arts and Media, echoed Rust’s sentiments.

“We are very pleased to see Dr. Buck recognized for her many years of service with the Arrow.  She’s always been extremely dedicated to her students and continues to this day to mentor them at all hours of the night and weekends.  The student newspaper has been a fixture at Southeast for decades but has really stepped up its professionalism in the past 10-plus years under her leadership.  Students not only have continually won more accolades under her advisement but have also gone onto amazing careers in multimedia journalism. This is a well- deserved award.”

As changes were afoot over the past decade in reinventing the Arrow, work began in earnest to restructure the publication as a digital-first news organization, and the newspaper became a leading student-run publication, both regionally and nationally.  This year, the Arrow was awarded the David L. Adams Apple Award for “Best Newspaper” among four-year schools with more than 10,000 students.

“It’s her leadership and advising style that motivates students to pursue new endeavors and achieve outstanding results,” Stepaniuc wrote.

Buck said, “I want them (students) to compete nationally and win,” she said. “When you go out on a national stage and when we win, oh my goodness! I want them to see they really are that good!”

In addition to the David L. Adams Apple Award, in April, Nicolette Baker, Arrow features and copy editor, was named Journalist of the Year by the Missouri College Media Association (MCMA), and Arrow Editor Nathan Gladden was elected MCMA president. He will lead the planning for the MCMA spring convention hosted by Southeast next spring.

Additionally, Southeast’s Department of Mass Media earned more than two dozen recognitions at the MCMA Spring Conference, and in its second entrance to the Missouri Broadcast Educators Association (MBEA) College Media Awards Competition, the Arrow On the Air podcast won first place for Best Audio News Show — its second consecutive first-place finish in this category.

Buck is a former journalist and public relations practitioner and holds a juris doctorate emphasizing intellectual property law from the University of Memphis. Her Master of Administration specializing in public administration and Bachelor of Arts in mass communication are both from Southeast. 

She is a highly called upon presenter and trainer who has led national conversations over the past two years on the need for improved media diversity and inclusion inside newsrooms and within news content. She regularly teaches “Media Law,” “Media Diversity” and “Multimedia Storytelling” at Southeast.

She formerly served as president-elect and vice president of Member Support of the College Media Association, and currently is a member of the Associated Collegiate Press, National Association of Black Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists and the Southeast Missouri Press Association.

Last year, she was honored with the U.S. President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her service to the community. In 2016, she was a co-winner of the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Teacher Award for innovations in teaching Diversity in Communication. In 2013, she was named a Kopenhaver Fellow (inaugural class) by the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University and to the Commission on the Status of Women of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

She previously served on Southeast’s Black Faculty and Staff Alliance and Faculty Senate. She currently serves as the board chair of the People Organized to Revitalize Community Healing (PORCH) Initiative, director of public relations for the Missouri Conference Lay Organization of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and holds multiple leadership positions at Perry Chapel AME Church in Charleston, Missouri. She also has provided service to the City of Cape Girardeau/Cape Girardeau Schools Ad Hoc Aquatics Committee, the City of Cape Girardeau Transportation Improvement Programs Transportation Trust Fund 6 Committee, the Cape Girardeau Boys and Girls Club, and the Cape Girardeau Civic Center Board of Directors.

Buck, a Charleston, Missouri, native, plans to step down as advisor to the Arrow this fall to focus on her administrative role as Department of Mass Media chair. At last spring’s Arrow end-of-the-year picnic, current and Arrow former staff members surprised her with a plaque honoring her tenure as the newspaper’s advisor. The celebration included a Zoom meeting in which six former Arrow editors joined virtually in the celebration and dozens of former Arrow staffers offered congratulatory messages, some of which are printed on a plaque presented to her. Additional well wishes were consolidated into a lengthy printed document and given to her as a keepsake.

Jasmine Evans will serve as the new adviser to the Arrow in fall 2022, with Buck assisting her as co-advisor as Evans assumes the role.