MNSPJ accepts unrestricted $2,000 college scholarship applications through May 10

Attention college journalists: The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists (MNSPJ) is now accepting applications for its 2025 student scholarship. This year, MNSPJ will award one $2,000 scholarship to a student pursuing a career in broadcast, print, online or visual journalism.

These are unrestricted funds and can be used as students see fit toward academic or professional pursuits.

Last year’s scholarship winner was Kenzie Nguyen, a resident of Brooklyn Park and undergraduate at St. Olaf College. The committee’s five judges were impressed by her willingness to look off campus for sourcing and take a global view on issues such as student housing, rather than merely surveying peers on campus for their immediate reaction to current events.

Her stories on how the rising cost of housing impacts students took her to the State Capitol and to a city planning department.

“The MNSPJ Scholarship helped me this year to pay for part of my college tuition,” said Nguyen. “It was such a great help as it allowed me to spend less time participating in work study and more time allocated towards The Olaf Messenger, St. Olaf College’s student newspaper.”

The 2023 scholarship was awarded to Caleb Hensin, who was then an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, and whose work for the Minnesota Daily had drawn him off campus to pen stories surrounding the debate over rent control in Minneapolis, a proposed Africa Village development in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, and interviews with elected officials.

“That (scholarship) was a big help to me,” said Hensin, who spent several months as a web editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press after graduation. “It definitely all went to tuition, which was a load off for sure. It meant I had to take out less loans!”

To participate in the 2025 scholarship competition:

Applicants must either be enrolled in a post-secondary institution in Minnesota or have graduated from a high school in Minnesota and be enrolled in college elsewhere.

Click here to submit an application form –- the first step.

Ask a professor, editor or supervisor to send their letter of recommendation to minnesota.spj@gmail.com.

Here’s what’s required:

1. Application form, which can be found here
2. Resume
3. College transcript (unofficial transcript is fine)
4. Letter of recommendation
5. Short answer (limited to 250 words): Why have you chosen journalism as a career?
6. Up to six samples of work via a link to your portfolio, a PDF of clips or story URLs.

Applications must be received by 10 p.m. on May 10, 2025. No late submissions will be accepted. The scholarship winners will be announced at or prior to MNSPJ’s annual Page One Awards banquet this summer, where recipients will receive their awards. Questions? Email fmelo (at) pioneerpress.com.