The University of Indianapolis Communication Department has won the National Communication Association (NCA) Rex Mix Program of Excellence Award, a national recognition for excellence among small undergraduate communication programs.
The award recognizes excellence in areas including curriculum, program quality, course design, and special programs. According to the NCA, programs are evaluated on their strengths, evidence of excellence, innovative ideas that benefit undergraduate students, and their potential to provide useful ideas to other communication programs.
The award is named after C. Rex Mix, a communication educator and former leader of NCA’s undergraduate College and University Section. According to NCA, Mix was an advocate for small communication programs and their contributors to the field.
The UIndy Communication Department joins previous Rex Mix Award recipients including Dartmouth College, the College of Wooster, the University of Tampa, and the University of Montevallo. NCA’s list of past recipients dates back to 1994, with the University of Puget Sound receiving the award that year and Southern Connecticut State University receiving it in 2025.
For UIndy Communication Department Chair Stephanie Wideman, the award represents more than an individual accomplishment.
“It’s a unique opportunity to win an award as a department,” Wideman said. “It’s for us to be able to share in this together with not just our faculty and our professional staff that are here now, but also past professors and staff as well.”
The department highlighted its experiential education opportunities and student management programs in its application. Wideman said those opportunities were a major reason she believes UIndy stood out among the programs that applied.
“I would say that we stood out first for the experiential education opportunities,” Wideman said. “Second, our intradepartmental activities. We really highlighted how each of the different tracks and entities work together.”
UIndy’s Communication Department includes several student-led experiential entities that allow students to gain hands-on experience in the communication industry: UIndy TV, Top Dog Communication, The Reflector, UIndy Theatre Company, Speech and Debate and UIndy Sports Communication. Wideman explained that these opportunities help bridge the gap between classroom learning and internships or employment after graduation.
When referring to the UIndy media programs, Wideman stated that they are built in a way for students to have the opportunity to hold a real job in the industry they want to enter after graduation, before they graduate.
Darryl Clark, professor and former department chair of communication, said the department’s experiential classes were at the center of its award application.
“I think our experiential classes really have made a big difference,” Clark said. “We had experiential classes before they were a trend in higher education.”
Clark said the department’s long history with experiential education has allowed faculty to develop and improve those courses over time.
The application also highlighted UIndy students’ accomplishments, including speech and debate awards, journalism awards and work produced through the department’s student-run media and public relations organizations.
The award will also take Wideman and Clark to New Orleans in Nov. for the NCA’s 112th Annual Convention. According to NCA, winning programs are expected to send at least one faculty member or administrator to the convention to receive the award and deliver a spotlight presentation.
Wideman and Clark will receive the Communication Department plaque and present a 45-minute session highlighting its initiative and experiential education opportunities. Clark said the goal is not for every university to copy UIndy’s programs exactly, but for educators to find ideas that can work at their own institutions.
“There should be certain aspects that people will listen to and think, ‘Oh, we could do that. That would improve our department,’” Clark said.
For the Communication Department, the award represents national recognition of work being done by current and former faculty, staff and students while allowing UIndy to share its approach to experiential education with communication programs across the country.
