CTSPJ announces five scholarship winners for 2022

The Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists hosted a summer gathering on June 25 at the Ansonia Nature Center in Ansonia, Connecticut, where this year’s contest winners and scholarship recipients were honored.

Five scholarships were issued this year.

Our first scholarship recipient is Madison Langweil, a senior at Marist College who studies biology and journalism and is from West Hartford. Currently a science news intern for the Stanford University News Service, Maddi aspires to be a science journalist.

Our second recipient is Jacklyn Pellegrino, from Staten Island, New York, who is going into her second year as a journalism major in the 3+1 accelerated bachelor’s/master’s dual degree program at Quinnipiac University. She’s a copy editor at The Quinnipiac Chronicle, where she edits articles, attends weekly deadline meetings and helps with the production of the weekly newsletter. She also reports and writes her own news stories based on campus updates and university events.

Our third recipient is Anya Grondalski, a double major in journalism and political science. She will be entering her final year of the communications 3+1 program at Quinnipiac University in the fall. She recently returned from a semester studying in Washington, D.C., where she worked in the Office of Public Affairs of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She’ll spend her summer interning with Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network in radio production.

At Quinnipiac, she is the podcast producer for The Quinnipiac Chronicle, as well as a video host and assistant producer with Quinnipiac Productions. She is also a member of the Honors Program, and serves on the executive board for QU Democrats and Students for Environmental Action.

Robyn Karashik is a Ridgefield native who recently graduated magna cum laude from Quinnipiac University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She’ll be going back this fall to get her master’s degree in journalism as part of the 4+1 program.

Robyn works as a field coordinator with the Ridgefield Democratic Town Committee and hopes to become a multimedia journalist once her education is complete.

And we have a special scholarship this year in honor of the late Genevieve Reilly, a former longtime reporter for the Fairfield Citizen and Connecticut Post, and her father, John Reilly. 

The Reilly scholarship has been awarded to Michael Sicoli, a journalism major who graduated from Quinnipiac University this past spring in his third year. He was The Quinnipiac Chronicle’s editor-in-chief during the 2021-22 academic year. He also was a member of the Dean’s List for each of his six semesters at college. Next summer he and 14 other students will attend a Quinnipiac-run program to cover the women’s World Cup in Australia/New Zealand, another step toward his goal of covering professional sports — preferably the NFL.