Kansas Wesleyan University’s Marketing and Communications Department has won a nationally recognized award.

Kansas Wesleyan’s “We’re Back” video from August 2020 has been named a Communicator Award winner, according to information released this week by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts. KWU received an Award of Distinction in the non-profit category.

According to KWU, other organizations to earn the Award of Distinction included Michigan State University, the Baltimore County Public Library, the Journal of the American Medical Association, AccuWeather and the city of Surrey, England. Winners of the group’s top honor, the Award of Excellence, included Forbes, UFC, PepsiCo, Comcast and others.

“We’re Back,” shot and produced by former campus videographer Franco Rivas ’15, commemorated KWU’s journey back to on-campus classes and activities following the tumultuous Spring 2020 semester, when classes were shifted online due to COVID-19.

“Any time you win an award like this, it’s a special experience,” said Brad Salois, KWU’s director of Marketing and Communications (MARCOM). “Franco did a fantastic job on this project, and it really became a motivational symbol of where we were as a campus, everything we’d experienced and our excitement at returning to Salina. It helped set the tone for a great school year.”

Rivas was recently named video editor for Major League Soccer’s D.C. United, and an extensive search is underway for his successor in Kansas Wesleyan’s MARCOM office.