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OSU Student Receives 1st Place in Hearst Sports Writing Competition

Oklahoma State University student, Cody Stavenhagen, received first place in the 56th annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program in which 108 undergraduate journalism programs at universities across the nation are eligible to participate.

Stavenhagen will received a $2,600 scholarship for his winning article titled “And Then There Was a Football Game” published in OColly.com. Oklahoma State University’s School of Media and Strategic Communications will receive a matching grant, as do the journalism departments of all scholarship winners.  He also qualifies to participate in the Hearst National Writing Championship, which will be held this June in San Francisco. There were 121 sports entries from 72 schools received in the third writing competition of this academic year.headshot

With Stavenhagen’s award, OSU moved into third place in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition. Indiana University remains in first place with the highest accumulated points from the third of the five writing competitions, followed by Pennsylvania State University. These three universities are followed by:

Northwestern University
University of Missouri
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Oregon
University of Iowa
Kent State University
Arizona State University

Other scholarship winners are:
John Stuetz, Pennsylvania State University, second place, $2,000 scholarship
Brady Vardeman, University of Oklahoma, third place, $1,500 scholarship
Garrett Ross, Pennsylvania State University, fourth place, $1,000 scholarship
Justin Wis, University of Oregon, fifth place, $1,000 scholarship

The sixth through tenth place winners receiving certificates of merit are:
Zoe Schaver, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sixth place
Peregrine Frissell, University of Montana, seventh place
Grace Palmieri, Indiana University, eighth place
Richie Mulhall, Kent State University, ninth place
Alden Woods, Indiana University, tenth place

Judging the writing competitions this year are:  Nicole Carroll, Vice President/News and Editor, The Arizona Republic; Mike Leary, Senior Vice President and Editor, San Antonio Express-News; and David Zeeck, President and Publisher, The News Tribune.

The Hearst Journalism Awards Program is conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication and fully funded and administered by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.  The 14 monthly competitions consist of five writing, two photojournalism, one radio, two TV and four multimedia, with Championship finals in all divisions.  The program awards up to $500,000 in scholarships and grants annually.

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation was established by its namesake in 1948 under California non-profit laws, exclusively for educational and charitable purposes.  Since then, the Hearst Foundations have contributed more than one billion dollars to numerous educational programs, health and medical care, human services and the arts in every state.