March 10, 2009
Bowling
Green, Ky. - Three Western Kentucky University photojournalism students have won awards in the 2009 Alexia Foundation photo competition.
Carl Kiilsgaard, a senior from Corvallis, Ore., won the Alexia student competition with a proposal to document poverty in eastern Kentucky. Kiilsgaard will receive a full-tuition scholarship (about $15,300) to study photojournalism at Syracuse University in London in the fall of 2009, plus a $1,000 cash grant to help produce his project.
A history major, Kiilsgaard has interned at Bucks County (Pa.) Times, the Napa (Calif.) Register and the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post and was one of Getty Images Reportage’s Emerging Talent picks in 2008.
In his proposal to the Alexia Foundation (http://www.alexiafoundation.org/), Kiilsgaard said he has traveled to Whitesburg more than a dozen times to document the families of eastern Kentucky and plans to use the grant to continue his project to raise cultural awareness about the region.
WKU students Philip Scott Andrews and Bryan Anselm were named Award of Excellence winners in the competition. They will receive a $1,600 scholarship that pays part of tuition, fees and living expenses to study photojournalism in the fall semester at Syracuse University in London and a $500 cash grant to help produce their proposed stories.
Andrews, a senior from Annandale, Va., is working on a project on illegal immigration in the United States and the hardships immigrants face. He has interned at the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star in 2008 and Roll Call Newspaper in 2006. He will intern this summer at the Associated Press in Los Angeles.
Anselm, a senior from Carmel, Ind., is working on a project documenting the struggles of youth in Uganda. He was a photographer in Uganda in the summer of 2008 for 4OneWorld, an organization that builds schools in Africa.
The Alexia Foundation was established by the family of Alexia Tsairis, a Syracuse University photojournalism student who died in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Fifty-five students from more than 30 universities applied to the competition this year. More information about the 2009 awards, including student portfolios and proposals, is available online at http://www.alexiafoundation.org/news/1/
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For information, contact School of Journalism & Broadcasting at (270) 745-4143.
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