To mark its centennial year in 2025, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association will honor individuals who have profoundly contributed to and have had a sustained impact on scholastic journalism education. The Centennial Awards honor individuals in five categories: Innovation, Impact, Lifetime Achievement in Scholastic Journalism, CSPA Alumni Achievement Award, and CSPA Service. CSPA wishes to thank its Centennial advisory board and Centennial Awards committee for their hard work and dedication to this momentous task.
All awardees are invited to attend a special luncheon on Friday, March 21, 2025, at the CSPA 101st Annual Spring Convention and Centennial celebration, where they will be honored for their service.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN SCHOLASTIC JOURNALISM
This award will be given to a member or members of the scholastic journalism community who have spent their professional lives serving the educational ideals for which we all strive: teaching the importance of, and ultimately the preservation of, a free press in our democratic society.
WINNERS
Candace Perkins Bowen
Candace Perkins Bowen’s passion for journalism, especially for student press rights, began when she was editor of her high school newspaper. This interest led her to get a BS in newspaper journalism and an MA in journalism education. In 1972, she began teaching English and journalism at George C. Marshall High School in Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools, and then at St. Charles High School in St. Charles, Illinois. She was a professor at Kent State School of Media and Journalism, when she retired in spring 2023. While there she directed the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University and the Ohio Scholastic Media Association. Bowen is a past president of the national Journalism Education Association (JEA) and continues to be an active member of JEA's Scholastic Press Rights and Certification committees. While she was president of the organization, she was a plaintiff in ACLU v. Reno, which ultimately helped to ensure that classroom teachers would not be held legally liable for websites their students access when not following school acceptable use policies. She is past chair of the Scholastic Journalism Division of Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and works with Student Press Law Center, especially in its efforts to support New Voices legislation in all 50 states. She holds a CSPA Gold Key.
Wayne Brasler
Described as the modern-day “Bard of Scholastic Journalism,” Wayne Brasler was a beloved teacher who inspired his students at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago into producing perhaps the most consistently award-winning student publications in the nation. In the words of one of his former student editors, “Mr. Brasler’s success was that he kept his hands on the writing and his hands off the paper.” A champion of student press rights, Brasler was on the National Scholastic Press Association board of directors for 40 years, wrote dozens of articles for scholastic journalism magazines, and taught summer journalism workshops throughout the country. Brasler inspired hundreds of student journalists, and more than 300 alumni of his program pursued journalism as a career in one form or another.
Mary Kay Downes
Mary Kay Downes is known in scholastic journalism circles as the “Queen of Yearbook,” or, more informally, as the “Yearbook Queen.” She was the adviser to the Odyssey student yearbook at Chantilly High School in Chantilly, Virginia, for more than 30 years. She has served as a mentor to several yearbook advisers and has judged for several state and national scholastic journalism organizations. During her tenure, the Chantilly High School yearbook received numerous CSPA Crowns, NSPA Pacemakers, and VHSL Top Trophy Class Awards. She served as the president of the CSPA Advisers Association, is a 2001 CSPA Gold Key recipient and 2020 CSPA Charles R. O’Malley Award recipient, and has been a speaker at the CSPA Fall Conference and Spring Convention and judge for CSPA for several decades.
Robert Greenman
Robert Greenman was a writer, educator, and speaker with major lifelong interests in journalism education, vocabulary acquisition, and education in general. For 30 years, Greenman taught high school and college English and journalism, advised student publications in Brooklyn, New York, and was a tireless proponent of the student press. He was the author of several books, including one that he co-wrote with his wife, Carol. They were both passionate supporters of CSPA, and he presented hundreds of sessions at CSPA and JEA conventions, at many state scholastic journalism conferences, and elsewhere. Greenman was the recipient of the CSPA Gold Key, the inaugural Charles R. O’Malley Award for Excellence from CSPA, the Joseph M. Murphy Award for Outstanding Service to CSPA, the NSPA Pioneer Award, and the JEA Medal of Merit; was a member of the University of Oklahoma National Scholastic Journalism Hall of Fame; and was recognized by the New York Times Newspaper in Education program for promoting newspapers as “effective classroom texts to improve literacy and leadership.” He was also honored by the Deadline Club with an annual award presented to a New York City–area high school newspaper adviser whose publication exhibits high-quality journalism teaching and a high degree of journalistic professionalism. The Deadline Club renamed the award in his honor.
H.L. Hall
An iconic figure in the world of scholastic journalism known for his comprehensive knowledge of all things related to publications, H.L. Hall is one of the few recipients of both the Dow Jones Teacher of the Year (1982) and the Journalism Yearbook Adviser of the Year (1995) awards. Since 2010, the latter award has borne his name. Hall was presented with the CSPA Gold Key in 1982. He has published textbooks on scholastic journalism that have guided many advisers and students. As president of the Journalism Education Association, Hall, who taught journalism for 27 years at Kirkwood High School in Missouri, was known for his lively reading of the write-off awards at each national convention. A well-known lover of ice cream, he also would compose poems to recite at subsequent Yearbook Adviser of the Year ceremonies.
Jack Kennedy
A master storyteller, Jack Kennedy started his career at City High School in Iowa City. Both he and the publications he advised received virtually every recognition there was to receive. Kennedy attended his first JEA convention in 1983 and went on to serve as president and local chair for its national convention. He always believed that journalism advisers are hands-down the most generous teachers you will ever meet. In a profile interview, Kennedy explained that “it’s always been a bit of an ‘us against the world’ attitude for advisers, partly due to taking some hits along the way as we support student voices and partly because we are usually the only media adviser in our schools.” Kennedy keeps the best of scholastic journalism traditions alive by both word and deed.
Valerie Penton Kibler
The current president of the Journalism Education Association and teacher of newspaper, yearbook, and broadcast at Harrisonburg HS in Virginia, Valerie Penton Kibler was named to the Virginia High School Hall of Fame in 2020 and awarded the CSPA Gold Key in 2011. She also received top honors from JEA and NSPA, including the JEA Carl Towley Award in 2021, and has served as the director of the Virginia Association of Journalism Teachers and Advisers. Kibler is known for her direct and down-to-earth personality and continually looks for ways to involve more advisers and students to be lifelong supporters of journalism and press rights. She imbues her students with a desire to learn by doing, and several have gone on to work in the field.
Helen Smith
Helen Smith is the executive director of the New England Scholastic Press Association and a past president of CSPAA. From 1973 to 2009, she taught English and journalism and advised the Newtonite and Mirettes at Newton North High School in Newtonville, Massachusetts. She edited the Stylebook for the Scholastic Press, Student Newspapers: Managing the Business Side (NESPA), and the Journalist’s Handbook (New England Press Association). For CSPA, she edited Springboard to Journalism and its teachers’ manual, The Official CSPA Stylebook, Scholastic Newspaper Fundamentals, and Scholastic Newspaper Critique. In addition to teaching in CSPA programs, she has taught high school students and teachers at Boston University and has been a visiting teacher in Armenia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, the Republic of Georgia, Romania, and Zambia.
Randy Stano
Randy Stano is a professor of practice in journalism and media management for the School of Communication at the University of Miami, where he was also the former Knight Foundation Chair in Visual Communication. Stano currently advises the University of Miami Ibis yearbook and Distraction magazine, which have won numerous CSPA Crown and ACP Pacemaker Awards. Stano has won the Joseph M. Murphy and Charles R. O’Malley Awards from CSPA, received the ACP Pioneer Award, was the CMA Yearbook and Magazine Adviser of the Year, and won recognition as a National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year. Stano is also a Society for News Design (SND) past president and recipient of the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award. Prior to instructing at the University of Miami, he worked with Pulitzer Prize–winning staffs at The Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star/Time. Stano consults internationally on color, type, and content use. He first spoke at CSPA in the spring of 1972.
Edmund J. Sullivan
Edmund J. Sullivan graduated from Columbia College in 1973 and briefly served as a Columbia administrator. In 1976, Sullivan was named assistant director of the CSPA under director Charles R. O’Malley. Sullivan became director in 1981 and was appointed executive director in 2006. As the leader of CSPA, he fought to recognize the hard work and continuous innovation of student journalists and their advisers. To acknowledge that work, he established the Crown Awards in 1982 and the Gold Circle Awards in 1984. To provide additional educational opportunities for students, Sullivan created the annual Summer Journalism Workshop in 1982. In 1996, the CSPA Advisers Association established the Edmund J. Sullivan Award in his honor, recognizing student editors who pursue innovative ways of presenting the truth for the benefit of their audiences. After 41 years of dedicated service to the CSPA and more than 50 years of service to the University, Sullivan retired on July 22, 2022.
Esther Wojcicki
Esther Wojcicki is an American journalist, educator, and vice chair of the Creative Commons advisory council. Wojcicki has studied education and technology and taught journalism and English at Palo Alto High School from 1984 to 2020. There she became the founder of the Palo Alto High School Media Arts Program, which has become one of the largest in America. She has a CSPA Gold Key and the CSPA Charles R. O’Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Kathleen Zwiebel
Kathleen Zwiebel was the 1998 Dow Jones Newspaper Fund National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year. A Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Key recipient, Zwiebel also received the Charles R. O’Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Col. Joseph Murphy Award for outstanding service to CSPA. She was honored by NSPA with the Pioneer Award and by JEA with the Medal of Merit and Lifetime Achievement Award. A CSPAA past president, Zwiebel currently serves as the chair of the Judging Standards Committee. Her mentorship, curriculum development, and teaching have established her as a pillar of scholastic journalism education.