Student-run Radio DePaul won nine awards from the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS), including the Abraham & Borst Award for Best College Station in the Nation.

The awards were announced at an IBS conference held March 5 to 7 in New York. A panel of professional broadcasters rated Radio DePaul as the best college radio station in the nation based on criteria such as quality of programming, service to the community, overall sound of the station and station management and operation, said Len Mailloux, board chairman of IBS, which has more than 1,000 member stations.

“We are humbled and thrilled to be honored by IBS as the Best College Station in the Nation,” said Scott Vyverman, who has served as Radio DePaul faculty manager since fall 2001. “The College of Communication and I are very proud of the work of our students.”

Other awards that Radio DePaul received at the IBS conference include:

● Best Station Promo: Rockband Giveaway; Best Event Promo: Blue Madness; and Most Creative Show: “The Midnight Rider,” all by Nick Freeman

● Most Innovative Show: “Days of Wonder” with Shan Kahn and Ben Gappa

● Best Community News and Best Spot News: Charles Haines and Lars Weborg (Olympics Announcement Coverage)

● Best Sports Update: Lars Weborg

● Best Newscast: Erin Osmon, Jason Shough and Lars Weborg

Available globally via the Internet (http://radio.depaul.edu) and iTunes radio, the 25-year-old Radio DePaul beefed up its programming in fall 2009 to become a full-service station while maintaining its music roots. The station now includes talk shows, author interviews and news as well as sports reports and live play-by-play of DePaul athletic games.

“We had hoped to create an instructional radio station with balanced programming, moving from a music-only model typical of so many colleges and universities to the mini-National Public Radio model of years gone by,” said Don Martin, associate dean of the College of Communication who chairs the Radio DePaul Advisory Board. “We also wanted to create a very tight linkage between station programming and the broadcasting curriculum. In addition to covering multiple genres of music, DePaul authors are interviewed, regular news and sports coverage is included and there is a cross-section of talk shows.”

To accommodate the sweeping changes at the radio station, Vyverman handpicked a managerial staff of DePaul undergraduate and graduate students to provide high-quality, around-the-clock programming. The station employs 75 students, mostly on a volunteer basis. “We’re creating more access and opportunity for students,” Vyverman said. “As much as possible I want to get my students on-air and broadcasting live.”

While the station operates outside the classroom, most students who work there come from the College of Communication. The college sees the station as a teaching vehicle and a place for students to get hands-on experience, said Vyverman, a former disc jockey and newscaster who has worked at WLIT-FM and WLS-AM in Chicago. A number of Radio DePaul alumni have gone on to broadcasting jobs right out of school, he said.

“We wanted to take what was already a pretty good music station and turn it into a really great all-service station,” Vyverman said. “It represents a big transition for Radio DePaul. It’s a good change that everybody has responded to very favorably.”

The station went from playing about 85 percent music to its current programming format of 55 percent music and 45 percent programming, including news, talk, sports, politics and an author’s corner featuring published DePaul faculty discussing their works. It went from providing 10 minutes of pre-recorded news to 60 minutes of live news daily.

“College radio often mimics what commercial radio does,” said Vyverman, who also teaches courses in radio broadcasting in DePaul’s College of Communication. “We don’t follow the conventions of commercial radio here.”

Radio DePaul was among the first handful of college radio stations accepted on iTunes Radio. Listeners can also view live Radio DePaul broadcasts via Webcam, which was created by Devon Blandin, a student in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. Blandin also designed an optimized Web site for iPhone users so they can listen and watch on their iPhones.

The latest awards bring Radio DePaul up to 16 national nominations and 10 national wins in the last five years. The station also received an award for community service from DePaul’s Student Life organization two years ago.

DePaul’s College of Communication is the second-largest provider of master’s degrees in communication in Illinois. It is the third-largest provider of bachelor’s degrees in communication in the state and second-largest in the Chicago area. Graduate programs include journalism; media and cinema studies; public relations and advertising; and organizational and multicultural communication. It offers undergraduate programs in journalism; media and cinema studies; public relations and advertising; and communication and media.