Best of CASE District VI Award
 

Institution: Missouri University of Science & Technology

Title of entry: Missouri S&T alumni shoot for the moon

About this entry: A 2018 Missouri S&T alumnus played a key role at the company behind last year’s lunar landing — the first U.S. moon landing since the Apollo program. His grandfather, also an S&T alumnus, was part of NASA’s Project Gemini, which was a precursor to Apollo.

This article was developed primarily to spotlight the 2018 alumnus’ background related to space exploration and how S&T played a direct role in his success. The alumnus works for the company in Texas and interviewed with the writer via Zoom not long after the successful landing. To prepare for the interview, the writer watched NASA’s livestream of the event and researched the alumnus’s background online.

The article was developed as a multi-use piece. It was posted on the university’s news website, distributed as a news release and picked up by local media, posted as an alumni affairs article that was included on the alumni association’s website carousel, included as a main highlight on the College of Engineering and Computing dean’s newsletter to U.S. News & World Report voters and alumni, listed in the “Latest news” section of the university chancellor’s weekly email to almost 50,000 stakeholders, and commemorated with a social media post — with tens of thousands of views and several hundred interactions across platforms.