Happy 20th birthday to the Chips Quinn Scholars program! We’re celebrating this milestone year by publishing special contributions from each class of Scholars throughout 2011. We invite Chipsters everywhere to share their thoughts on what the program has meant to them. E-mail Michelle Hedenskoog for guidelines.
John Quinn, co-founder of the Chips Quinn Scholars [...]

Special to CQS
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Recipients of the 2011 Chips Achievement Prize (CAP) awards were announced this week, with eight Chips Quinn Scholars from the 2011 Spring and Summer classes recognized for outstanding examples of journalism. Eight additional Scholars received honorable mentions for their submissions.
“I was pleased with the overall quality of this year’s entries,” said [...]

by Alejandra Matos
Charles (Charlie) Ericksen is not your typical Hispanic. In fact, by blood, he isn’t Hispanic at all. Yet his love and dedication for the Hispanic community run deep within him. While in his 20s, he married a Mexican woman, Sebastiana Mendoza, after meeting her in Oaxaca. They moved to East Los Angeles with [...]

by Lanz Christian Bañes
I bought my first smartphone one week before I started my Chips Quinn Scholar experience in 2009 — and I’ve never regretted either.
I was naive back then, using my new phone to mess around with Facebook and play online chess, never realizing the potential journalism tool I had in my hand. But [...]

Moving on:
Jomay Steen (Summer 1997) is a reporter for the Black Hills Pioneer in Spearfish, S.D. Previously she was a reporter for the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal.
Tanya Caldwell (Summer 2003) is a Web producer for The New York Times, where she is building and enhancing the homepage and other pages within the site as news breaks. ”I [...]

By Ryan Balbuena
Chhun Sun and I embarked on a massive road trip in July from Manteca, Calif., to San Diego to attend Comic-Con International, the annual pop culture fest.
It a nutshell it was one car, two guys, four days, four cities, six Chipsters (all Summer 2005) and over 1,500 miles.
Chhun and I dubbed the adventure [...]

by Sue Stock
Looking back, I see myself sitting in the corner of a very large banquet room with my class of peers at the opening dinner of orientation in 2000. I remember feeling nervous. I remember thinking how cruel it was to stuff us full of delicious food and then ask us to think of [...]

by Jacob Muselmann
If there’s a black sheep of journalism interns, I, the copy editor, was it.
I was on my way to class when I got the call. “Sure, I’d love to work for you in Wisconsin,” I said. My voice was less than convincing. I didn’t even know how to pronounce Wausau.
When I told my [...]

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