Video: Mike Doyle reflects on career as he accepts 2014 James A. Tidwell Award
The Belvidere fixture is retiring after 15 years of working with high school journalists — and fittingly he's the recipient of IJEA's highest teaching honor, renamed this year as the James A. Tidwell Award.
May 16, 2014
CHARLESTON — Mike Doyle, winner of IJEA’s 2014 James A. Tidwell Award for Excellence in Scholastic Media Education, used his acceptance speech to look back on his journalism career — not just his time as a teacher and adviser but the years before that, when he worked for Rockford Register Star covering, among other things, the Chicago Bears during their Super Bowl-winning season.
Doyle is retiring after 15 years as a newspaper and yearbook adviser in Belvidere high schools — seven years at Belvidere North and, before that, eight years at Belvidere.
The award Doyle received, previously known as the Illinois Scholastic Journalism Educator of the Year Award, was renamed in memory of Prof. James A. Tidwell, who died April 12 at age 65 after battling pancreatic cancer.
Tidwell, chair of the Journalism Department at Eastern Illinois University, was a longtime supporter of scholastic journalism and instrumental in starting the Illinois Journalism Education Association.
Doyle received his award May 2 at the IJEA advisers breakfast held in conjunction with the IHSA journalism state final at Eastern Illinois University.