March 2011
Sanchez
Claudio Sanchez, education correspondent for National Public Radio, will be the featured speaker at the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Lemke Journalism Project (LJP). The event will be at 2 p.m., Saturday, April 9, at the Springdale High School Performing Arts Center.
The LJP is a program conducted by the Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism and Fulbright College, at the University of Arkansas. It trains high school students to be better media consumers and identifies those who want to go into journalism as a profession.
The celebration will recognize contributions by students, journalism professionals, educators and others who have supported the project for 10 years, as well as this year’s class of students.
Special recognition will be paid to Tyson Foods, which recently donated $250,000 to ensure LJP’s continuance for another decade and beyond.
Anyone with an interest in the Lemke Journalism Project is welcome. Awards and Sanchez’ address will take place in the theater, followed by a reception.
The celebration is sponsored by the Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism, the Northwest Arkansas Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and KUAF.
A former elementary and middle school teacher, Sanchez focuses on the “three p’s” of education reform: politics, policy and pedagogy. Sanchez’s reports air regularly on NPR’s award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition.
He joined NPR in 1989, after serving for a year as executive producer for the El Paso, Texas, based Latin American News Service, a daily national radio news service covering Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico border.
From 1984 to 1988, Sanchez was news and public affairs director at KXCR-FM in El Paso. During this time, he contributed reports and features to NPR.
In 2008, Sanchez won first prize in the Education Writers Association’s National Awards for Education Reporting, for his series “The Student Loan Crisis.” He was named as a Class of 2007 Fellow by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. In 1985, Sanchez received one of
broadcasting’s top honors, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, for a series he co-produced, “Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad.” In addition, he has won the Guillermo Martinez-Marquez Award for Best Spot News and the El PasoPress Club Award for Best Investigative
Reporting. He also has been recognized for outstanding local news coverage by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Sanchez is a native of Nogales, Mexico, and a graduate of Northern Arizona University, with post-baccalaureate studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
