SC Scholarship Winner

Mills Hayes is a junior at the University of South Carolina majoring in Broadcast Journalism with a minor in Political Science.  She has been a Dean’s List student during her entire college career.  Mills’ journalism experience began at the start of her freshman year when she joined the staff of the student-run campus television station.  She held many positions in the news department, eventually becoming the news director.  In addition, Mills served as the station manager for two semesters.  This duty involved training other students, ensuring that programming was available for the 24/7 station, and managing the station’s budget. Her off-campus experience includes two summer internships in a South Carolina congressional office working with the communications director and the press secretary.  Mills is currently a reporting intern at WIS-TV in Columbia for the 2018 spring semester.  She has a combined interest in journalism and politics. Her career goal is to cover the White House or Capitol Hill for a major news network.

 NC Scholarship Winner

Theashionna Owens (or “Tosh” as she is called by family, friends and faculty) is a senior at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC, majoring in Mass Communications. She began her college career as a Public Health major.  Her intent was to be a health educator and an advocate for health issues in the African-American community. Following her involvement in organizing community health events both on and off campus, Tosh’s academic advisor suggested she switch her major to Mass Communications to take her messages and talents to a broader audience.  She became a contributor to the campus newspaper and took on the role of producing, writing, and hosting campus special events on radio and the web. She also served as a member of the student senate during her junior year.  Tosh’s off-campus experience includes an internship at WTVD/ABC 11 in Durham during the fall semester of 2017.  In between all of these activities, Tosh “created media” by launching a podcast focused on motivating women to reach out and pursue their goals in life.  The podcast Tosh created is just the first step in what she believes will be achieving her dream of building her own media company.