2011 CJA Charitable Fund Award Winner announced!
CJA’s Charitable Trust is pleased this year to award scholarships to two outstanding young people who have begun their studies at two top universities for journalism. This year brought a strong group of applicants for the $1,000 awards.
The winners are Lauren Stark and Sarah Maslar-Donar.
Lauren and her mother, Donna, attended the annual awards dinner on Oct. 14th and picked up Lauren’s award. Sara was unable to attend because of college commitments, and her scholarship check was mailed to her.
Here are mini-profiles of our award-winners. Congratulations to them both!
• Lauren, a 2011 graduate of Carmel Catholic High School in Mundelein, is enrolled at Butler University in Indianapolis. She had an outstanding academic record, and Carmel’s campus minister called her “as talented and accomplished a young person as I have met and worked with in 35 years” at Carmel.
Lauren served as editor-in chief of her high school newspaper, where she oversaw and edited each issue and also wrote cogent editorials. “Through this lens,” she says, “I realized the incredible amount of effort that is required of journalists.” Yet that challenge didn’t deter her.
She is one of only two freshmen hired for Butler’s newspaper, The Collegian. There she serves as a copy editor. “During my first week of copy editing, I caught numerous efforts where a reporter simply did not check the facts,” she observed. “While a misplaced comma may not seem so important when on deadline, if the reader can’t understand the writing, the story is not worth the cost of ink.”
• Sara, a 2011 graduate of Nazareth Academy in LaGrange, enrolled at the University of Missouri in Columbia to pursue her dream of becoming a journalist. The dream began, she said, when she started writing in a diary in second grade. By the time she got to Nazareth, she was set on a career path.
She worked as a writer and news editor for the high school paper and found that she also enjoyed being involved in layout of the publication.
Topics she wrote about include: Catholic students helping improve the lives of struggling entrepreneurs in impoverished countries; a program to increase understanding among Catholics, Muslims and other religions; and student efforts to help Chicago’s poor.
Next year’s CJA scholarships will be announced here, online, as well as through Chicago-area public and parochial schools. Please keep your eyes open for deserving young journalists-to-be.
The Chicago Journalists Association Charitable Fund
The Chicago Journalists Association annually awards
a scholarship to high school seniors accepted to college programs or to students enrolled in undergraduate college courses.
Awards are intended to support individuals who want to work in the field of journalism and communications.
However, because people come into journalism from a variety of fields, grants may be available to those majoring in undergraduate programs such as political science and economics that would lead to careers in journalism and communications. Awards are based on financial need, professional potential and/or commitment to the field of journalism.
Note: The Chicago Journalists Association was formerly the Chicago Press Veterans Association