Kotzebue students, faculty members win journalism awards

May 5, 2016

Marmian Grimes
907-474-7902

Students and faculty members at the ÐÓ°Épro Chukchi Campus recently won several awards in the ÐÓ°Épro Professional Communicators’ annual contest.

Three students — Savannah Kramer, Deirdre Creed and Katherine Stein-Booth â€” received first-place awards for stories published by the ÐÓ°Épro Dispatch News. Kramer’s story addressed the danger of teenage cyber-stalking, even in the most remote reaches of rural ÐÓ°Épro. Creed’s story chronicled a wrestling mishap at a statewide tournament that landed her in the emergency room. Stein-Booth’s story explored human kindness and compassion.

Three other students received second-place awards for their work: Mary Sue Hyatt, for her story about a fall moose hunt; Joshua Roetman, for his story about one of the nation’s toughest wrestling camps; and Gus Nelson, for his story about commercial fishing in Kotzebue Sound.

The students wrote their winning pieces for a series that appeared in the ÐÓ°Épro Dispatch News. They wrote the stories while participating in the Chukchi College Honors Program, which simultaneously awards high school and UAF college credits to students from the Kotzebue-based Northwest Arctic Borough. The honors program was co-founded in the late 1980s by English and journalism professors Susan Andrews and John Creed.

Andrews and Creed also won first-place awards as faculty journalism advisers and for their overview of nearly three decades spent encouraging excellent writing from rural and ÐÓ°Épro Native university students.