The three 2023 KEMPA scholarship recipients were off to a great start in their journalism careers at their respective universities. Abigail Maxey honed her talents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, while Chloe Barbarise jumped right into her journalism classes at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Finally, Chase Keller took his talents to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he worked under the tutelage of KEMPA Executive Director and Associate Professor of Journalism Keith Zukas. 

    Abigail wasted no time in getting into her journalism classes at UW-Madison in the Fall. She started with an Introduction to Mass Communication and made the dean’s list in her first semester. She was then accepted into the school of journalism in the Fall semester of 2024. Her plans are to take classes in both mass media and digital media production and to work towards a degree in journalism and a certificate in Digital Studies.

    Chloe Barbarise began to flourish at the University Of Illinois Champaign-Urbana by taking  Introduction to Journalism and the History of American Journalism classes. More importantly, she was one of only a select few of students to become a copy editor for the Daily Illini, a well known, independently-run student newspaper. This job entailed evaluating nearly 10 articles and being on call for eight hours, three days a week.

     Chloe was also selected to be a member of the New Voices Internship Program in the College of Media. Her role as an intern was to write profiles for the college website involving faculty, students and alumni. She has always enjoyed being an editor, and her dream is to become Copy Chief or even Editor-in-Chief for the Daily Illini.

     Chase Keller started his journalism career at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and immediately began his journalism classes and got involved with student newspaper on campus The Royal Purple. He took Writing for News Media in his first semester, on his way to a 4.0 GPA. He learned all of the basics to set him on his way to write about sports.

     With The Royal Purple, he started honing his journalistic skills immediately. He wrote 12 articles for the men’s sports section covering everything from football to wrestling. He was a staff journalist for the sports section and aspires to be Section Editor or Managing Editor by his junior year.