UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Catie Grant, assistant teaching professor and director of CommAgency in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications; is the recipient of the 2024 Undergraduate Program Leadership Award.
The award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated exemplary leadership benefiting a Penn State undergraduate degree program. Specifically, it recognizes those individuals who have major responsibilities for the delivery of undergraduate education within a unit and who are providing leadership that has transformed or revitalized the undergraduate program in some way.
Nominators said Grant brings her extensive knowledge of the video production industry to Penn State and uses that knowledge to train the next generation of visual storytellers. Before joining Penn State in 2016, Grant worked for a decade in the creative services department of Penn State Public Broadcasting. Grant’s experience is in producing and directing short-form documentaries and client-based video projects. At Penn State, she teaches courses related to film production and telecommunications and media industries.
CommAgency is both a learning tool and asset for Penn State. Students work under the direction of experts like Grant to create high-quality, low-cost media for Penn State clients, local nonprofits and start-ups. This gives students a chance to work with professionals using professional equipment to serve real-life clients in areas such as video production, photography, live production, social media and graphic design.
Nominators said Grant’s mentorship with the students, and quality of work she helps them produce, stands out.
“It’s not just that clients have been pleased with their work; it has received regional and national recognition. CommAgency work for the Division of Undergraduate Studies, for instance, won a Bronze Telly Award,” a nominator said. “Most recently, the social media team, a subdivision of the agency, recently won merit recognition in the 11th annual Education Digital Marketing Awards. This competition pitted the students’ work against that of professionals from across the United States. The students’ Instagram account, created for the Matson Museum of Anthropology, was singled out for the award.”
Nominators said Grant garners student praise in the field as well as the classroom. Nominators said she teaches her students that every story matters to someone, deserves to be told, and has the ability and responsibility to impact people in profound ways. They said she’s helping her students find their voice as they discover their style of storytelling.
“Professor Grant’s teaching philosophy is evident in her students’ comments. She establishes a sense of individual worth and professional capacity, then creates mutual trust among students to help them function creatively and professionally in groups,” a nominator said. “She brings the groups together to offer meaningful but respectful criticism of one another’s work and to freely provide technical support to one another. This will be a distinctive feature of her cohort of students in the job market.”