Students from both the Student Voice staff and the Moorpark College Journalism department took home a handful of awards from the annual Journalism Association of Community Colleges (JACC) fall conference.

The conference was held on Saturday, Oct. 14, and included forums, lectures and competitions for community college journalism students. The 13 visiting students from Moorpark College attended educational seminars and competitions throughout the day.

“JACC always provides an opportunity to learn from other publications. I took away a lot from just meeting other student journalists and looking at their work,” said Editor-in-Chief Martin Bilbao, 19, Political Science major.

In addition to learning, the attendees also got the chance to compete, and took home five individual awards. Bilbao won second place in the video journalism category. Photographer James Schaap won an honorable mention for his Sports Feature Photo, and third place for his Feature Photo entry. Mikayla Cornwall won an honorable mention in the critical review competition, and Student Life Editor Dallas Vorburger won first place in the same competition.

“I personally had never written a review before, but I am experienced in opinion writing. It was nice to try something new,” said Vorburger, 22, Journalism major.

Even those students who hadn’t entered or won a competition benefited from attending the conference, learning new journalism techniques and styles to apply at the college. In the meantime, the paper will be hard at work preparing for the larger spring conference.

“I am proud of the exceptional work from some of our staff. Dallas is a fantastic writer with a lot of passion and potential, and James is one of the best photographers I have had the pleasure of working with,” said Bilbao.