CTSPJ honors its 2021 scholarship winners

The Connecticut SPJ honored five scholarship winners for 2021 at an outdoor ceremony on July 17 at Ansonia Nature Center. Scholarship winners must be enrolled at an accredited university in Connecticut or be a Connecticut resident enrolled in an accredited university in any state or country studying journalism.

Here are this year’s scholarship recipients:

Alison Cross is a rising senior who writes for UConn’s Daily Campus and is working this summer as a C-HIT intern covering young people’s health concerns. She aspires to become an investigative journalist at a major print publication.

Samantha Simon is a rising senior at Quinnipiac who prides herself on having grown up in Queens, N.Y. After graduation, she hopes to work for a non-profit news organization that focuses on social justice before someday making her way to the New York Times. In her free time she likes crafting and spending absurd amounts of money on plants.

Melody Rivera is a senior at CCSU who has written for The Recorder for three years and has been president of the Autism Connection Club for two. She has been passionate about writing since eighth grade, when she wrote for her middle school’s newspaper.

Matthew White is a junior at Keene State College who’s involved with the Equinox student newspaper and the WKNH student-run radio station. He participates in student government, enjoys photography and also plays instruments including the guitar and drums.

Eric Kerr is a 3+1 student at Quinnipiac who recently completed his undergraduate coursework and will continue on to the school’s sports journalism graduate program in the fall. He has covered sports and news for Q30 Television and worked as a broadcast manager for QBSN.

Kerr is the recipient of the Jack Kramer scholarship, a special scholarship given this year in honor of the late Jack Kramer, a long-time editor at the New Haven Register.