Fellowships at the Hechinger Institute  

 "Covering America, Covering Community Colleges" Fellowship

This Fellowship promoted quality coverage of community colleges by bringing a small group of journalists each year to the Teachers College campus. While here, they attended workshops, visited community colleges and listened to panels of experts. This cohort, the third and last of the Fellowship, was selected in May 2009.

Projects from the 2009 Cohort:

Fellow Marisa Schultz of The Detroit News, looked at how the economically devastated state of Michigan is retraining its jobless and what role higher education plays in times of record unemployment. Her latest article examines how community colleges and for-profit schools are benefitting from the state's No Worker Left Behind program since August 2007.

Jennifer Jordan, a Fellow and reporter for The Providence (RI) Journal, is writing a series about how Rhode Island’s community college system is trying to prepare students for jobs of the future in an economic downturn . She recently covered legislation to fund new worker training programs.

Matt Miller, a Fellow and staff writer for the Lansing (Mich.) State Journal, is producing a series of articles on how Michigan’s community colleges are helping manufacturing workers displaced by industry cuts.  Here is the first article, and the second.

Bill Maxwell, a Fellow who writes for the St Petersburg (Fla.) Times, used a series of columns to focus on the structural separation between secondary and post-secodnary education, and the consequences of that gap for students in Florida. Here is his first column, and his second.

Fellow Diane D'Amico, who writes for The Press of Atlantic City (N.J.), has looked into how remedial classes contribute to the low graduation rate at New Jersey's community colleges, and what is being done to help students succeed.

Fellow Elaine Korry, who reports for NPR and KQED-FM's California Report, looked at how private, for-profit colleges are luring students shut out of community colleges, especially in nursing.

Stephanie Cohen, a Fellow with Marketwatch.com, is looking at how community colleges are using federal stimulus funds to train students for green jobs

Fellow Brian Maffly, who writes for the The Salt Lake Tribune, looked at the implications of the decline or loss of Utah’s rural community colleges.

April Dembosky, a Fellow based in the Bay Area of California, took a look at rare look at the world of community college sports, examining California’s community college athletic programs.  Reporting for The Sacramento (CA) Bee, she focused on the Cosumnes River College men's basketball team. For KQED-FM's California Report, she covered the California Community College Championship.

Fellow Beth Fertig, a reporter for WNYC in New York, is spending the semester with a remedial math class at LaGuardia Community College. In a series of reports she is getting to know the students, teacher, and subject matter in a class taken by 40 percent of communtiy college students.

"Exploring Teaching" Fellowship

The Institute offered this Fellowship to journalists interested in pursuing a major story or series on teaching and learning in 2009. This Fellowship was designed to support journalism on critical topics in K-12 teaching. Journalists working in Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio, as well as journalists based elsewhere, pursued in-depth projects of their own devising on a broad range of relevant topics: teacher training, effectiveness, distribution, compensation and retention.  

Here are the projects produced by the Exploring Teaching Fellows.