Marilyn Simpson Ford Award
In
May 5, 2001, the College Fraternity Editors
Association honored me with their Marilyn
Simpson Ford award. CFEA is a network of magazine editors, graphic
artists, and webmasters who work or volunteer for their fraternal headquarters.
The award honors Marilyn Simpson Ford, a longtime editor Pi Beta Phi's magazine, the Arrow. Established in 1989 by Pi Beta Phi, the honor is awarded each year to an individual who has distinguished himself or herself through outstanding service to CFEA. I have served on CFEA's board for three years and chaired a few committees, which is why I was likely selected to receive this honor.
Here
is a copy of a very flattering article that will run in CFEA's flagship
publication The Fraternity Editor.
Pearce Receives Ford Award
Fresh off one-and-a-half years of sleeping on couches that most of us would have thrown out 15 years ago, living out of a car and waking up in a new town every few days, Jason Pearce was both ecstatic and terrified when he left the road as a chapter consultant with Lambda Chi Alpha for the comfier confines of the Lambda Chi Headquarters office in Indianapolis.
Pearce had accepted the position of director of communications and web development, which entailed serving as editor of the Cross & Crescent, the fraternity's 48-page quarterly magazine distributed to 125,000 members worldwide.
"My predecessor, 1995 Ford recipient Wally Jenkins, had spent so many years producing better and better issues of the Cross & Crescent that I was destined to fail," said Pearce. "And sure enough, I did; for my first issue was riddled with mistakes - 51 to be exact."
"I made all of the classic errors: misspelling a board member's name; listing the wrong page numbers in the 'Table of Contents'; attributing the wrong photo for a chapter news story; listing someone as deceased when they're not dead yet; and I even managed to screw up the cover, for I missed a big nasty hair that must have slipped in when the photo was scanned."
"It was bad - real bad - and I desperately needed help. Thankfully, it didn't take me long to discover Wally's secret: CFEA."
"Perhaps you could equate this new discovery as a religious experience. With the AP StyleBook as my bible, I began to clean up my act. I started attending CFEA meetings on a regular basis, carefully listing to every word their experts preached. Hungry for more, I began organizing Indianapolis luncheons much the way someone would form a bible study. I believed in the editor's gospel, and was soon able to write articulate sentences that were packaged in appealing layouts. I was saved."
Since learning the tricks of the trade, Pearce has been helping "save" many a new editor. At the 78th CFEA Annual Conference this past May, Pearce received the Marilyn Simpson Ford Award in recognition of his outstanding service to CFEA.
Pearce is a 1994 graduate of Elon College in North Carolina, where he double majored in Broadcast Communications and Corporate Communications. He was a founding father of the Lambda Chi Alpha chapter at Elon and served as chapter president his senior year.
He spent five-and-a-half years on staff at Lambda Chi Alpha before accepting a position with WeAlumni.com, a dot-com start-up in Washington, DC, in December 1999. He held the position of content architect and post sales support while at the same time continuing as a volunteer at Lambda Chi, assisting with the development of www.lamdachi.org.
After a year, WeAlumni.com ran out of money and was bought out. Pearce stayed on until February 2001, and recently accepted a position with Carden Jennings Publishing and will be starting in June. He'll be opening the company's Indianapolis office and will be their Midwest regional manager of their Fraternity Solutions Group.
Pearce served the past three years as a director on the CFEA Board. He has served as regional conference chair, chairman of The Fraternity Editor, chairman of the information technology committee, and twice has served as annual conference chair. He has also facilitated a number of workshops at CFEA regional and annual conferences.
"It wasn't until I became involved in CFEA that I truly experienced interfraternalism," said Pearce. "I distinctly remember visiting with Bill Schilling, this year's Varner recipient, during my first CFEA conference in Lexington, Kentucky."
"Shamefully, I knew nothing about Delta Sigma Pi. But that didn't bother Bill, for he was happy to give me a brief history lesson. What surprised me, however, was that he seemed to know just as much about Lambda Chi Alpha as he did his own fraternity. While rattling off names of Lambda Chi staff members that he considered personal friends-men whom I had known for less than two years- I realized what CFEA was all about."
"More than just a professional resource, CFEA is home to some of the greatest and most talented people I know. If I ever had a question or needed some advice on a story I was working on, I could turn to any one of my peers for help. Perhaps that's why I've never hesitated to volunteer for a CFEA committee or board position, for I still have a long way to go to repay all of the favors and assistance that I have received from CFEA and its members."