20/20 Visual Media Endows the Rick Beardsley Temple Update Award

We’re proud to announce that 20/20 Visual Media co-founders Patrick Rosenbaum and Rob Czyzewicz have made a gift to Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication that will permanently endow an already existing scholarship named for our beloved late professor, Rick Beardsley.

The Rick Beardsley Temple Update Award recognizes outstanding students whose commitment to Temple Update goes beyond the producing, filming, and editing. It equally acknowledges selflessness, leadership, and teamwork - qualities that Rick embodied every day.

We often say that without Rick, we would not have each other. Patrick and Rob met at Temple, working for its weekly student newscast, Temple Update. Update was Rick’s brainchild, and his life’s passion. He shared that passion with the two of us, and quite literally thousands of other students in his 26 years of service to Temple.

Temple Update was the place we honed our skills, and in many ways, where we learned we could become successful video producers. But it was those moments with our fellow students, and with Rick, that were more formative. Each Wednesday night, as we were scrambling to finalize scripts and export video clips onto tapes (yup, tapes) for Thursday morning’s show, we would break for about an hour to gather in the newsroom and share in the Update tradition of pizza and Pepsi, which Rick bought for his students each week for decades.

“When the opportunity came to permanently endow (the scholarship), we thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate his life and our own 10-year anniversary.”

It was in that hour where we’d all become close, talking about our life’s passions and our hopes and dreams. We’d also share stories of family – and Rick had a few of those – mostly about his 17 nieces and nephews, all of whom he adored. He loved the beach, the Flyers, David Letterman, the Beatles, box lacrosse, and taking pictures. We talked politics, religion, our places in society, and so much more. Rick was quick to share his opinions, but he was quicker to lend his ear.

For us, now was the right time to make this gift for a variety of reasons. It’s hard to believe, but June marked ten years since Rick’s passing. Less than two months later, in August of 2011, we founded our company. We had been donating to the Beardsley Award little by little since it was created, but when the opportunity came to permanently endow it, we thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate his life and our own 10-year anniversary.

For those who may not know, here’s what the Rick Beardsley Temple Update Award does: it celebrates Rick’s 26-year commitment to Klein College, and it recognizes his contribution to the school, the Department of Media Studies and Production, and most of all, Temple Update. Any student who participates in Temple Update is eligible for the award, but not just any student wins it. The award recognizes not just the producing, writing, videography, and editing skills that it takes to be a contributing member of the news team. It also recognizes students who exemplify leadership, service, and the selflessness that was so characteristic of who Rick was.

The list of students who have won the award over the past ten years is exceptional, and we’ve been fortunate to either know, or get to know, many of them. In fact, three of our former interns (Ankit Patel, Kevin Otte, and Asad Bokhari) are Beardsley Award winners. There could not have been better choices. The work they each do in their careers not only make us proud, but they allow Rick’s legacy to continue to reverberate throughout the news, filmmaking, and television businesses, respectively.

Finally, a note of additional thanks goes to two equally important people: Betsy Leebron-Tutelman and Peter Jaroff. Betsy is the co-founder of Temple Update, and was Rick’s closest colleague for nearly 20 years. She and Rick started the program together in 1988 to give Temple students the most real-world television news experience they possibly could. She might even tell you that she’d be surprised by the level of work being produced on Update today, 33 years after it first hit the airwaves.

Peter Jaroff took the reins from Betsy in 2007, and since then, he has overseen the show’s evolution from a program that was produced once a week and aired on a local cable access network, to one that is the flagship program on TUTV – Temple University’s own cable station. In addition to the weekly program, daily cut-ins for TV, social, and web called Update Now and Update Ahora (the Spanish language broadcast) have been added to the repertoire of what students produce under the show’s umbrella.

“Three of our former interns (Ankit Patel, Kevin Otte, and Asad Bokhari) are Beardsley Award winners.”

Update has won numerous Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards, and literally dozens of other industry and student awards competitions across the country. It is simply one of the best programs a student can take part in if they want to learn the skills to be a successful professional. We always used to say, “Update puts people to work”, and that remains true. There are countless students who have become professional reporters, producers, videographers, and editors at news stations, and there are even more of us who have gone on to work for production companies, public relations firms, ad agencies, or in communications departments for large companies.

Among Rick’s gifts was that he found the one thing in you that even you didn’t know was there. But that’s true of so many of the professors at Temple’s Klein College. You don’t go into college thinking that your professors will become your friends, but there’s just something different about the people at Temple. Betsy, Peter, and so many others have been our mentors, and become our friends. And though current Temple students are certainly missing out from never having the opportunity to have met Rick, they are certainly lucky to have people like Betsy and Peter guiding them along their way.