Two films produced by students at the college's new animation department - each about cuddly animals struggling in a challenging world - earned the student version of the awards from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation, the same group that gives out the TV Emmys. The winners were announced last week and the awards will be presented on March 14 in Los Angeles.

"Faux Paw," a four-minute 2D-animated short about the dangers of meeting strangers on the Internet, won the award for traditional animation. The film is a public-service announcement for elementary students based on an idea from former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and his wife Jacalyn Leavitt.

"Pet Shop," a five-minute film about a chinchilla trying to get the attention of a boy looking for a new pet, placed third in the computer animation category.

"It's pretty phenomenal," said BYU animation professor Kelly Loosli, who supervised the making of "Faux Paw." "We're competing with the top animation schools in the nation."

Not a bad outcome considering "Faux Paw" wasn't even completed when BYU submitted it for Emmy consideration. The film, which is expected to be completed today, will premiere in Washington D.C. on Monday.

Utah's former first lady is the voice of Faux Paw - named after the Leavitts' real pet cat - who meets another cat in an Internet chat room but later realizes it's a bulldog. The former governor's voice also appears as, what else, a governor. The film also comes with a companion book.

"Their goal is to put it in every second-, third- and fourth-grade classroom in the U.S.," Loosli said.

"Pet Shop" marks the second year in a row that a BYU film has won a student Emmy for computer animation. Last year, the student-produced "Lemmings," about one of the fuzzy suicidal rodents who learns of his fate, won a first-place Emmy as well as a third-place student Academy Award.

That also led every student who worked on "Lemmings" to a job with either a Hollywood animation or special-effects studio. Students who produced "Pet Shop," which was completed last fall, also landed work on such computer-animated films as the upcoming "Robots" and "Ice Age 2."

"At BYU, we don't necessarily get the best artists but the smartest artists. That fits in perfectly with what the studios are looking for," said R. Brent Adams, who heads the university's animation department. "I was surprised how much studios watch these awards. The day they posted the Emmy winners, I started receiving e-mails from Disney, Disney television and [special-effects house] Digital Domain inquiring about our program and current crop of students."