Cranberry Fest Brings Campus Community Together

Rider University’s Cranberry Fest took place on the Campus Green September 6 with a down-home, country carnival atmosphere. The new Starbuck’s Café was the center of attention, along with stilt walkers, fire-eaters, jugglers, southern cuisine and the country band, “The Casey Whyte Trio.”

Senior Communication Major Receives National Broadcast Journalism Award

Nicholas Ballasy, a senior communication major with a minor in political science, received the Frank Shakespeare Excellence in Broadcast Journalism Award last month from the Fund for American Studies. The fund is composed of nine institutes around the world that bring college students together for educational programs and engage them in a rigorous examination of economic concepts, political systems and moral philosophy. The award was named in honor of Frank Shakespeare, president of CBS for almost 20 years.

The award recognized Ballasy’s outstanding performance in the area of broadcast journalism as CNN’s only intern at the White House, a position he held this past summer in Washington, D.C. Ballasy was selected for this position from more than 250 applicants from across the country. As a participant in the Institute on Political Journalism, he attended a class on economics in public policy and a class on journalism ethics at Georgetown University. The Doylestown Intelligencer recently featured a Q&A profile with Ballasy about his educational experiences in Washington and at Rider. Ballasy is president of Rider University Network (R.U.N.), host/producer of the network’s On the Issues show, reporter/producer for News at Rider and staff writer for The Rider News.

While covering the White House "Conference on the Americas" with CNN, Nick Ballasy met U.S. President George W. Bush.

EOP Students Perform Volunteer Work with American Cancer Society

Several of Rider’s Educational Opportunity Program’s (EOP) freshmen participated in a community service project last month with the American Cancer Society (ACS). The students made “Butterfly Bags” for pediatric cancer patients receiving treatment at the Children’s Hospital in New Brunswick. The project, made possible through the Eastern Division of ACS, involved coloring and decorating the outside of brown lunch bags, and then filling them with supplies for making a butterfly. Nearly 400 children received the bags.