Two grants totaling $8.21 million were awarded Tuesday to the Walter Cronkite School to enhance training for professional and student journalists and create a permanent position for visiting business professors at the school.
The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, which has a mission that includes the enhancement of business journalism, selected the Cronkite School as the recipient of its grants to improve its business-journalism specialization.
Obtaining the grants was based on a collaborative effort between ASU President Michael Crow and Christopher Callahan, dean of the Cronkite School and vice provost for the Downtown campus.
Andrew Leckey, the Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism and the president of the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, attributes the success of the business-journalism specialization to the caliber of students attending ASU and the involvement of the school’s administration.
“One of the reasons the foundation became so interested in ASU was because of how actively involved Dean Callahan and President Crow were in the grant proposals,” Leckey said. “Their efforts were backed up with the quality of the students and their success here.”
One of the grants, which totals $6.21 million, will be used to sustain the Reynolds Center at Cronkite. The remaining $2 million grant will permanently allow visiting professors to work with Leckey and expand the Cronkite School’s business specialization.
“The strength of this grant is that it re-emphasizes the importance of business journalism and also points out the strength of our Cronkite students,” Leckey said.
The new visiting professor position, which should be filled by next semester, will benefit both the school and the students, Leckey said.
“The addition of a visiting professor means that the Cronkite students will have the benefit of additional professors from a variety of different business-journalism backgrounds,” Leckey said.
Cronkite has had visiting business professors from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and CNN, Leckey said. But, he said, this grant is important because it creates a permanent position at Cronkite.
“The students, as of January, will benefit by always having an additional voice here, which I really look forward to,” said Leckey.
Some students who will receive the grant’s benefits said this is a good opportunity to expand business journalism at Cronkite.
“It would be better if we had a more specialized training, like workshops. We need something more in-depth,” journalism senior Amy Villarreal said. “It’s exciting, it’s great, there needs to be more professors that share their insight in the field.”
Cronkite School alums are also spreading the word about the program’s success.
“I heard about Cronkite from a broadcaster in my hometown and recommended that I go there if I was serious about journalism,” said Sonny Scott, a journalism freshman.
Contact the reporter at aborund1@asu.edu
