Five students at Hocking College placed third in the national 2014 Global Dialogues contest. The team of five talented students consisted of Victoria Moyer of New Lexington, Lakota Boetcher of Rockbridge, Courtney Carsey of Albany, Jeff Barnes of Circleville and Clarence David Harris of Glouster.

Global Dialogues is an organization that strives to encourage creative young people to cultivate empathy, compassion and unity through the power of media. The organization hosts yearly contests to empower young people across the world to speak out about serious taboo topics such as child abuse and sexuality. The contest gives participants creative freedom to write fiction or non-fiction, create a video, play, poem or short story; but all creations must be related to a given subject.

The team created a narrative called, "The Story of Ronnie," for a college psychology course. The story was about Ronnie's transgender life journey. The students divided the work, each concentrating on a segment of Ronnie's life to focus on the challenges and supports that Ronnie would face as she matured. The students mixed their segments together to finalize the story, ending with Ronnie's wedding and eventually finding true happiness.

Hocking College student Ndeye Penda Leye of Senegal, was also selected as one of the 20 international winners of the contest. Penda wrote the heart wrenching, fictional account of the circumcision of a five-year-old girl. This was Penda's second year placing in the top 20 of the Global Dialogues contest.