WKU senior Colleen Stewart was recently awarded a prestigious Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholarship.
WKU student Colleen Stewart has been awarded the H.L. Stevenson Scholarship from the Overseas Press Club Foundation. She received the award recently at the Yale Club in New York City. (Photo by Michael Dames)
Stewart, a news-editorial journalism major from Crestview Hills, received the $2,000 award at the Foundation’s 2011 Annual Scholarship Luncheon at the Yale Club in New York City. Charles Sennott, executive editor of GlobalPost, was the keynote speaker.
Stewart was among 14 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 175 applicants from 55 colleges and universities. Her winning essay described a newly widowed and financially destitute Rajamma, whom she met while interning in India. Rajamma’s husband had only recently swallowed a bottle of pesticide after his cotton crop had failed. In the last decade, 180,000 Indians, many in the cotton industry, have committed suicide.
Stewart was awarded the H.L. Stevenson Scholarship, named for the legendary editor-in-chief of United Press International.
The scholarship winners were also honored with a reception at Reuters the night before the luncheon and toured The Associated Press headquarters in New York City.
The OPC Foundation is the nation’s largest and most visible scholarship program encouraging aspiring journalists to pursue careers as foreign correspondents.
Contact: School of Journalism & Broadcasting, (270) 745-4144.
