BRC director honored for changing drinking attitudes

Tracy Downs, program director for the Building Responsibility Coalition

4:54 p.m., Sept. 22, 2004--Tracy Downs, program director for the Building Responsibility Coalition (BRC), received the 2004 First State Distinguished Award for her efforts to change student behavior and influence views about excessive drinking, on and off the campus.

Downs received the award from the Delaware chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), a global network of professionals committed to improving organizational effectiveness through strategic communication, Monday, Sept. 20, at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington.

“I’m very honored to have been chosen,” Downs said. “It’s a very difficult job because you have to balance different opinions and different interests in alcohol issues. We need to develop strategic planning and stick to it. The greatest challenge has been trying to convince students that, if they choose to drink, they can do so in a way that doesn’t hurt them or others and still have a good time.”

BRC is a campus/community partnership advocating policies for the responsible and legal use of alcohol in order to promote a healthy environment for students, residents and businesses by reducing the harm to people and property caused by high-risk drinking.

UD President David P. Roselle, who nominated Downs for the award, outlined her accomplishments, including providing leadership and support to strengthen enforcement of existing policies, both on and off campus, developing and distributing educational materials to a wide variety of audiences, assisting campus and community groups in designing and implementing efforts to change the social and cultural environment of the Newark area and creating and disseminating BRC reports to coalition members, University administrators and city officials.

Downs has taught a research on alcohol course to approximately 350 undergraduates since the fall of 2001. Students enrolled in her fall 2003 service learning class about living in Newark developed the Student Neighbor Program, which brings BRC and local landlords together to initiate better relationships between students and residents in Newark neighborhoods and to break down the stereotypes that each holds about the other. BRC and UD’s Office of Public Relations last week launched the “UDo Live Here” campaign to encourage students living off-campus to be good neighbors.

“Throughout all of these tasks, Ms. Downs has applied both her interpersonal and mass communication skills in an outstanding manner,” Roselle wrote. “She has been involved with many diverse audiences, including students, Newark residents, business owners, parents, faculty members, leaders of nonprofit organizations, University officials and local and state policymakers. At times, her duties have required her to work with others on an individual basis in determining the policy objectives and strategies to be employed. On other occasions, her potential audience might well be all of the residents of the county or state.”

John Bishop, associate vice president for counseling and student development, said many of BRC’s efforts to reduce high-risk drinking among college students have depended on various media advocacy initiatives.

“Tracy Downs has been at the center of those activities and her interpersonal and mass communication skills have been crucial to whatever successes have been achieved to date,” Bishop said.

Christine Ketcham, senior account executive at Clear Channel Communications Inc., who presented the award to Downs, said the success of the BRC program relies on Down's interaction and communication with students, faculty and administration, the community and law enforcement officials to raise public awareness and change attitudes about binge drinking among college students.

Downs has been working with BRC since February 1998. She holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in liberal studies from UD. She is pursuing a doctorate in education, focusing on administration, policy and educational leadership.

Downs’ work has received attention from other colleges and universities across the nation. She has been invited to work as a consultant at Boston University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in developing campus-community coalitions.

“I feel very strongly about what I do,” Downs said. “You have to believe in what you are doing.”

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Kevin Quinlan

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