Carrie Faust named Medal of Merit winner
The Journalism Education Association has chosen Carrie Faust, MJE, of Parker Colo., as a 2013 Medal of Merit award winner. This award is presented to JEA members who have made significant contributions to scholastic journalism.
Faust has been involved in journalism education at the state and national levels as a board member and leader. She has served on the board of the Colorado High School Press Association, including two years as president, and is currently the advocacy coordinator for the association. She serves as Southwest regional director for JEA, and is a member of the JEA Scholastic Press Rights Commission.
Her students have won numerous honors, at all levels, and the yearbooks she has advised have won three Pacemaker awards from the National Scholastic Press Association and three Silver Crown awards from Columbia Scholastic Press Association. Her books are always among the top-rated in the All-Colorado competition, and the newsmagazine she advises also has earned numerous honors.
But presenting the Medal of Merit to her goes beyond Faust’s work with her own students at Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, Colo., or even the many students and teachers she reaches through the many workshops she teaches each year.
She is a constant defender of the First Amendment, and she invested a lot of energy and skill in helping Overland High School in Aurora overcome threats of censorship in 2011. As Overland newspaper adviser Laura Sudik, CJE, wrote, “I hear so often about school publications that have been censored and advisers who have lost their positions, and I truly feel that is what would have happened to Overland without Carrie’s backing.”
Faust will receive the Medal of Merit on Nov. 16 during the JEA/NSPA Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Boston.
The Journalism Education Association Inc. is the only independent national scholastic journalism organization for teachers and media advisers. It is headquartered at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan.