Last month, we launched our new fellowship program for college journalists. The VICE Fellowship for Collegiate Reporting connects our newsroom with college journalists across the country to publish content on a focused topic. For its inaugural semester, the VFCR will focus on mental health.
We received more than 400 pitches for this new program, validating our conviction that mental health coverage for and by college students is a crucial area of focus for us. The pitches came from more than 200 different colleges and universities across the country. We’re grateful for all the students who shared their ideas with us, focusing on everything from immigration and wait times for on-campus therapy to meme culture, suicide rates, exercise and more. It was a tough decision — in a good way.
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We’re excited to announce the four students that we’ll be working with this semester: Jenna Siteman from the University of Michigan, Sasha Charlemagne from Howard University, Vania Castillo from the University of Texas at El Paso and Reid Champlin from the College of William and Mary.
Each student will be paired with one of our staffers — Kate Lowenstein, Susan Rinkunas, Rajul Punjabi and Ankita Rao —who will mentor them through the storytelling, reporting and production process. Projects will be published across the VICE network by the end of May.
Congrats to the selected students! We are so pumped to develop this program further with them.
