Several journalism students came home with first-place awards for their work for the Baker Orange after attending an awards conference hosted by the Kansas Associated Collegiate Press Sunday and Monday.

“We entered over 100 individual things,” Associate Professor of Mass Media and Communication Gwyn Mellinger said. “And we had 40 individual awards.”

Editor of the Baker Orange, Patrick Lattin, walked away with one of the most prestigious awards, journalist of the year. Mellinger said the award was well deserved.

“He’s just an extraordinary person,” Mellinger said. “I’ve had hardworking students before and incredibly organized students before; I may not have had a student who has as huge of a capacity for doing work and doing it well as Patrick.”

Lattin said he was pleased he won the award and excited all the late nights and hard work paid off, making his efforts worthwhile.

“Having a product every week, and seeing the good and the bad is rewarding but kind of stressful, so to get this award, I was elated.”

Chief copy editor Courtney McClain was a first-place winner for her performance in the on-site copy editing competition.

“It was hard to prepare because you don’t see the stories until right then, and you have to edit them right there,” she said. “But it really wasn’t too bad because I know the AP Stylebook really well.”

Chad O’Bryhim received numerous awards at the conference for his design work.

“Chad swept interior page design. He had first, second, third and two honorable mentions,” Mellinger said.

Other first place winners included O’Bryhim for cartoons, Kris McDonald for sports writing, Kelsey Kimberlin for news photography and Rachael Logan and Sharon Stauffer for series writing.

After submitting three samples of the Orange, the newspaper was awarded the All-Kansas award for four-year private colleges.

“This is the eighth All-Kansas award that we have gotten in 10 years,” Mellinger said.