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.
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.
CSPA PLATINUM KEY
On the occasion of the centennial of the Association, CSPA will award Platinum Keys to individuals who are already Gold Key recipients and who continue to demonstrate surpassing skill and enduring dedication and passion to educate our future journalists. As with the Gold Key, these individuals have also devoted countless hours in support of CSPA, so that we as an organization may continue our mission of educating and supporting student journalists and their advisers to preserve a future free press.
WINNERS
Rebecca Castillo is a storyteller who prefers the visual medium. She is the associate director of the CSPA where she plans and organizes CSPA’s three annual conventions and workshops. As well, Castillo develops curriculum and manages the Crown Awards, Gold Circle Awards, and the National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year program. Castillo co-edited and produced the award-winning book, Magazine Fundamentals. Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, where she was a member of CSPA as a high school student, Castillo graduated from Columbia College, where she studied film. She received her M.A. from the Columbia Journalism School, where she studied digital media, photography and video. She has worked at CSPA since her graduation from Columbia College in 1994. In her spare time she is a freelance photographer. Her photography has been published by TIME magazine and The New York Times Foundation.
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.
Antonio Rodriguez
Antonio Rodriguez’s interest in journalism began when he was a writer on his high school newspaper and attended a CSPA convention. The experience led him to apply to Columbia College, where he was accepted and later earned his B.A. in political science. While he was a student, he worked at CSPA and upgraded all the association’s workflow systems. After he was hired, he led the organization’s transition online, and established publishing and judging platforms. He has long been a proponent of arts journalism education. He created the Stringers program for New York City students and every year he organizes the Broadway excursion during the Summer Journalism Workshop, including a press conference with staff and actors. He is currently the associate director of CSPA.
Laura Schaub
Laura Schaub is a scholastic journalism legend. From her days at the University of Oklahoma, where she was advising award-winning publications and directing the Oklahoma Interscholastic Press Association, to her work with advisers and staffs across the country, she has inspired strong design, great photography, and wonderful writing. She has served CSPA in multiple roles over the years—as a Crown judge, writing publication critiques, as a summer workshop instructor, and speaking at fall and spring events. As president of CSPAA, the advisers association of CSPA, she and executive director Edmund Sullivan attended the Supreme Court hearing to witness the decision in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. In 2003, she created the very first Crown winners report for members, assembling examples from every Gold and Silver Crown publication and creating slideshows for advisers to share with their staffs.
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.
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.