The winner of The Judith Frank Outstanding Student Organization Award (OSOA) this year is Q30.

“When I found out that we had won, I was both very excited and very proud. This is something that Q30 strives to achieve every year. We found out when we were in our office. Some of the Student Center staff came by and dropped a hint that we should check our mailbox today. Ten minutes later, the letter was there,” Jeff DeHaan, vice president and incumbent general manager of Q30 said.

The OSOA was started in 1988 and named for the former director of the Carl Hansen Student Center, according to the Quinnipiac Web site. It is honors a student organization that shows strong leadership skills and commitment to presenting programs at Quinnipiac University as well as to the community.

The OSOA is focused on the quality of the service, not necessarily the quantity, according to the Quinnipiac site. The OSOA is meant to publicly award the organization’s talent and commitment.

Q30 has grown in the past few years from a station with only two hours of programming on a continuous loop to over 15 hours under a controlled schedule.

“Q30 now has the electronic bulletin board which displays information pertinent to the Quinnipiac community including club information and campus events,” DeHaan said. Q30 has also achieved their goals this year both by bringing in ad revenue for the first time and building their Web site at www.Q30.org.

Q30 has also grown in membership. The station’s staff now exceeds 200 members. To better organize the members, the organization created various departments and placed new and existing members who have helped to increase Q30’s visibility on and off campus.

Not only does Q30 work with other clubs on campus to tape their events, but they are also involved in community service projects for the community.

“Our biggest project this year was an educational video with the Metro Stars Major League Soccer team that is being viewed in elementary and middle school all across the New York and New Jersey area,” DeHaan said.

Although Q30 has accomplished many things this year, they already have a clear set of goals for next year. “Our goal for next year is to continue the growth of Q30. We hope to increase membership, increase programming, as well as increase viewership. We want to engrain Q30 as a vital part of the Quinnipiac community,” DeHaan said.

Through their involvement in Q30, students are able to get real, hands-on experience outside of the classroom.

“I have learned more from working with Q30 than any class that I have taken,” DeHaan said. “It takes a lot of hard work and countless hours to make a station run. The experience that I have gained is invaluable and I could not have had this experience anywhere else.”

Melissa Scagliola, a senior broadcast journalism major and news producer at Q30, believes she is now ready for the real world because of what Q30 has taught her.

“I’ve taken many classes where I’ve learned things over because I’ve already been made aware of them from Q30. I feel no class at QU simulates a working newsroom like the feeling of working at deadline for Q30. JRN 391 attempts to create what its like to produce in a newsroom but a lot of students really aren’t into it and have no passion for being there unlike the way we all are at Q30 News,” Scagliola said.

One of DeHaan’s favorite memories of this year was the media carnival. “I was in the hot seat at the dunk tank and believe me, there was a long line waiting to dunk me,” DeHaan said.

Although they work on deadline at Q30, the members still like to just joke around.

“While anchoring this year I did read a word that was supposed to be the word ‘was’ as it was written in my script, but it was written wrong in my script. So instead of ‘was’ I read ‘w-s-a.’ I read it out letter by letter… I thought it sounded funny and almost cracked up on set but didn’t know until the end of the show what I really was suppose to say. That’s when I really cracked up and a lot of us did. The word didn’t look like ‘was’ and didn’t look like anything I knew and didn’t look at the context around the one little word so just thought it stood for something,” Scagliola said.

Q30 is not only an organization, it is one big, happy family.

“There are many hardworking members who tirelessly dedicate hours upon hours of their time each week to Q30. This award was won from the hard work and dedication of all our members,” Scagliola said.

Q30 has multiple meetings each week as well as each individual department meetings.

They are always looking for new members, with or without previous experience. If you are interested in learning more about Q30 contact them at [email protected].