The Houstonian, UH’s yearbook, received an Honorable Mention Award of Excellence in Taylor Publishing’s 2008 Yearbook Yearbook.
Then-Editor in Chief Stephanie Pendergraft Hodgins said she remembered the hurdles she and the staff overcame to meet deadline.
"The whole process of creating the yearbook was probably one of the most difficult and trying things that I’ve ever done." Hodgins said. "But it was one of the biggest learning experiences I’ve ever had."
The Houstonian was honored in the 22nd edition of the Yearbook Yearbook for its dedication, effort and accomplishments, according to a release.
During the 2006-2007 academic year, Hodgins said the staff had to overcome working with a skeleton crew and faulty computers, among other problems.
"We had a lot of hard times that year. We had computer problems – our computers crashed in the middle of the whole thing and we were down to one computer," Hodgins said. "We had all kinds of issues and somehow got finished."
Despite all the setbacks the yearbook staff suffered last year, Hodgins, who graduated in December with a degree in broadcast journalism, was proud the book made it to the publisher by deadline.
"That year’s book was probably the first in five years that got finished on time," Hodgins said. "I was just proud of the fact that we got finished on time and now we have an award on top of it. That’s pretty exciting."
Hodgins said a major problem was the lack of publicity the yearbook received. She said it was difficult keeping her staff’s morale up when so few students even knew the yearbook existed.
"That was a struggle in itself, trying to keep people motivated because yearbook is not exactly a hot topic on campus," Hodgins said. "It’s kind of hard to get excited about something that nobody else is. And I think yearbook was probably one of the hardest things to get excited about especially because so little people actually want to get involved."
Last year’s yearbook staff consisted of seven section editors, including current Editor in Chief Dondria Cooper, and four photograhers. Hodgins shares the credit of the award with them.
"All the credit goes to the staff and all the people who put the hard work into it," Hodgins said. "If it hadn’t been for the people involved we wouldn’t have gotten finished on time (and) we certainly wouldn’t have had any kind of award."
