Rochester Students Take Home Journalism Honors at MSU

Submitted by Julia Satterthwaite

Sixteen Rochester High School students and one teacher attended the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association (MIPA) Summer Journalism Workshop at Michigan State University (MSU) from July 29-Aug. 1 alongside 400 high school journalists and the best journalism educators in the country.

Students take one class all week on writing, design, photography, leadership or new media and instructors give one Spartan (top honor) and three Excellence Awards to the most outstanding students.

RHS came home with seven of these honors, including: Lauren Boyd, Spartan Award for her work in Ultimate Yearbook Section Editors; Camille Douglas, Spartan Award for her work in Advanced InDesign; Danielle Kullmann, Spartan Award for her work in Illustrator and Information Graphics; and Ashley Powell, Spartan Award for her work in Creative Illustrator Techniques. Natalie Bradley (Ultimate Yearbook Section Editors), Elizabeth Jordan (The Complete Yearbook) and A.J. Prisciandaro (Entertainment Coverage) also won Excellence Awards.

In addition, The Talon newspaper staff won the MIPA Staff Challenge, which involves meeting as a staff, planning goals for the following school year and mapping out a plan for how the goals will get accomplished. They won a Bluetooth Wireless Speaker for their efforts at the closing ceremony.

The Talon newspaper adviser Julia Satterthwaite was honored to teach Feature Coverage at the workshop; this was Satterthwaite's 10th year of working at the workshop in some capacity, fifth as an instructor. Satterthwaite is entering her second year as president of MIPA, which involves monthly board meetings in East Lansing, and lots of logistical planning about meetings, membership, curriculum alignment, conferences and workshops and answering adviser questions over email and G-chat throughout the school year.

Students had a chance to watch a design presentation from journalistic design gurus Betsy Pollard-Rau and Cheryl Pell, interview professional journalists (videographer for the Lansing State Journal Paul Henderson, editor for MLive Meegan Holland, broadcast journalist for WLNS Jam Sardar, and web producer for WBEZ Chicago Tricia Bobeda), listen to an inspirational talk from 2012 MSU basketball graduate Anthony Ianni about his personal struggles with autism and bullying growing up, and attend a concert by Joe Hertler of The Rainbow Seekers.

Congratulations to all RHS participants for making the Falcon family proud: adviser Julia Satterthwaite; newspaper students: Sydney Bammel, Olivia Bennett, Camille Douglas, Erin Eyler, Danielle Kullmann, Hannah Loveland, Grant McPherson, A.J. Prisciandaro, Sam Sheppard, Sarah Walwema, Melody Zhang; yearbook students: Lauren Boyd, Natalie Bradley, Elizabeth Jordan, Shama Parekh and Ashley Powell.