Elissa Nadworny
Elissa Nadworny reports on all things college for NPR, following big stories like unprecedented enrollment declines, college affordability, the student debt crisis and workforce training. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she traveled to dozens of campuses to document what it was like to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. Her work has won several awards including a 2020 Gracie Award for a story about student parents in college, a 2018 James Beard Award for a story about the Chinese-American population in the Mississippi Delta and a 2017 Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in innovation.
Nadworny uses multiplatform storytelling – incorporating radio, print, comics, photojournalism, and video — to put students at the center of her coverage. Some favorite story adventures include crawling in the sewers below campus to test wastewater for the coronavirus, yearly deep-dives into the most popular high school plays and musicals and an epic search for the history behind her classroom skeleton.
Before joining NPR in 2014, Nadworny worked at Bloomberg News, reporting from the White House. A recipient of the McCormick National Security Journalism Scholarship, she spent four months reporting on U.S. international food aid for USA Today, traveling to Jordan to talk with Syrian refugees about food programs there.
Originally from Erie, Pa., Nadworny has a bachelor's degree in documentary film from Skidmore College and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in northern Alberta are on the look out for a stolen taxidermy polar bear nicknamed "Harry."
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Noah Kahan went from writing a pandemic album on his parents' farm in rural Vermont to selling out an arena tour and being nominated for best new artist at the Grammys.
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London art student Svitlana Dolbysheva was back in Ukraine for the holidays working for a foreign TV crew in Kharkiv when a Russian missile hit the hotel where she was staying. She was badly injured.
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Ukrainian prisoners, both military and civilian, were exchanged for Russian prisoners of war, as Russian missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities. It was the largest swap since the war started.
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Some states have passed laws or implemented policies related to evidence-based reading instruction — as two-thirds of children struggle to read. How are colleges that train teachers responding?
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An update on the Russian missile and drone attack that struck cities across Ukraine Friday. There are worries that the world is "growing tired" of the news from the war there.
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Russia fired more than 100 missiles at Ukraine on Friday, hitting cities including Lviv and Odesa and killing at least 16 people.
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Polish truckers and transport business owners blocked traffic at the Ukraine-Poland border — over the removal of limits on how many Ukrainian drivers and businesses can come to Poland and the EU.
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Top colleges aim to create a diverse campus with students from all walks of life; so they're traveling to places they've neglected before: rural communities.
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After a months-long delay, the federal student aid form — known as the FAFSA — will reopen later this month — with drastic changes to the way the application is completed.