MAYS LANDING — Atlantic Cape Community College’s Communication Awards annually recognizes the best creative work from the current academic year’s communication major students while also honoring an exemplary student as the Communication Major of the Year.
Previous winners have gone on to achieve successful careers in education as teachers and professors, marketing, journalism, professional sports and more. This year’s recipient surely has a bright future in front of her, but it’s the overwhelming adversity that she has overcome in her life just to reach this milestone that is truly remarkable.
Jordan Thompson (left), a freshman from Atlantic City, NJ, was leading the typical life of a high school teenager at the Atlantic County Institute of Technology in Mays Landing when her world was thrown upside down. While the rest of her classmates were participating in their senior year of high school and excitedly preparing for the next step in their lives, Jordan was thrust into the battle of her life after being diagnosed with synovial sarcoma.
Synovial sarcoma is a rare, aggressive form of cancer that originates mainly in deeper soft tissues such as muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fibrous connective tissue, typically close to joints. It is classified as an orphan disease for its rarity, meaning that it historically receives limited research funding and medical attention. Because of this, it has posed significant challenges for accurate diagnosis, treatment advancement and patient support.
“My diagnoses of synovial sarcoma stopped me from finishing out my senior year due to the required treatments. After graduating, I was very anxious heading into Atlantic Cape because I wasn't sure how I was going to fit in with other people. Thankfully, this communication major program has been so accepting of me from the beginning,” said Thompson.
She admits that it took the entire Fall Semester for her to crack her untalkative shell, but during the Spring Semester she discovered a side to her persona that she didn’t know even existed.
“My first semester was a bit rocky. I wasn't very talkative or anything, but I got there eventually. Professor Forrest really brings it out of you. He really brought out my extroverted side that I didn't even know was there,” said Thompson, who admitted to simply being honored by being a Communication Major of the Year honoree. “This was just an amazing experience. He (Forrest) sees something in his students that they don't see in themselves and he helps you to see it. It was really nice to just feel a part of this community.
This year’s Back to the Future–themed event, held in the Walter E. Edge Theater on the Mays Landing campus on April 24, presented more than 75 awards in more than 30 categories including public relations, public speaking, performing arts, film and television. Individual students, alumni, faculty and media professionals were recognized for work in their respective fields.
Class of 2011 alumna Arielle Reamer was honored as the Communication Alumni of the Year and Class of 2022 alumna Kayla Corson was honored as the third inductee into the Jeopardy Hall of Fame. Communication students compete against each other in Jeopardy games as part of their reviews for the midterm and the final in Professor Forrest’s classes.
In other awards presented at this year’s 19th annual event, Cole Oravits of Woodbine was named the Communication Major of the Year runner-up, Class of 2023 alumna Chloe Cramutola was named the Julianne Scott Volunteer Service Award winner, Class of 2022 alumna Aylin Alvarez-Santiago was named the Max Fineran Support Each Other Award winner and Monique Moore earned the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award.
In recognition of her 40 years of professorial service to the students at Atlantic Cape, English Professor Effie Russell (left) was presented with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award by her son Associate Professor Rich Russell.
“Effie has always appreciated the essential component that literature and writing have to our lives as human beings. Literature helps us to understand our ourselves and the world. The work of discussing literature, of wrestling with the moral decisions that the characters make, of writing about those struggles as they mirror our own. This is not work that can be outsourced to an artificial intelligence,” said Rich Russell. “Effie has always understood the necessity of saying what is difficult, what is inconvenient, what is confrontational even, because she wants the best from all of us and from the college that she calls a second home.”
Effie reflected on how much the College has meant to her over these past 40 years.
“I have a very small nuclear family. There are four of us — my son, myself, my husband and my daughter, but I have always thought that my students and my colleagues here were my family, and it's been a wonderful, wonderful journey for all of us.”
Visit the Communication Awards Club on Campus Groups (sign in required) at https://atlantic.campusgroups.com/cac/home/.
About Atlantic Cape Community College
Established in 1964, Atlantic Cape Community College is a Middle States accredited, Hispanic Serving Institution proudly serving the residents of Atlantic and Cape May counties. As a comprehensive, two-year community college, Atlantic Cape offers 50 undergraduate degree programs, and 34 certificate and professional series programs at its Mays Landing, Atlantic City and Cape May County campuses. Atlantic Cape is home to the renowned Academy of Culinary Arts, rated the top culinary school in New Jersey, and for more than 50 years, our highly-acclaimed Nursing program. Atlantic Cape also partners with more than 30 colleges and four-year universities to offer students the opportunity to seamlessly earn a bachelor’s degree upon graduation.
