Ted Scripps
Environmental Fellowships

Funded by his daughter, Cindy Scripps, the Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder are moving into their second decade. In partnership with CU's Center for Environmental Journalism, the nine-month fellowships allow five professional journalists an opportunity to acquire knowledge necessary to cover the environment more effectively and enrich the public's understanding of this crucial subject. The Scripps fellows audit classes, conduct in-depth research, and reflect on critical questions without the pressure of deadlines.

With seminars and field trips, the program brings participants together with leading environmental specialists. This helps journalists better understand key environmental issues, but it also helps the scientific community better understand the media and the way journalists work.

2008-09 Fellows

Jad Davenport is a freelance photojournalist based in Denver, Colo., has written and photographed stories for a variety of magazines, including Outside, Men's Journal, and ISLANDS, where he is contributing editor and photographer. He began his career through war photography in the 1980s. In the late 1990s, he photographed and wrote stories for the World Health Organization about epidemics in Africa, Asia, Central and South America. Davenport won a 2007 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for a feature on South Georgia in the sub-Antartic.

Deborah J. Fryer is a freelance producer, writer, director and founder of Lila Films, Inc., an independent production company for educational videos and documentary films. She has created films for PBS, Nova, Frontline, MSNBC, Discovery, History Channel, Turner Broadcasting, HGTV, U.S. Fish & Wildlife and Audubon. Her first documentary, "SHAKEN: Journey into the Mind of a Parkinson's Patient," won multiple awards. She has also been published as a writer, and was noted as "one of the 20 up-and-coming writers in the U.S. to watch" by the literary journal New Millennium Writings.

Joanna Kakissis is a freelance journalist based in Athens, Greece. Kakissis has been published by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, World Hum, and The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., where she was previously a staff writer. She has received awards from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and the North Carolina Press Association. She also contributed to a News & Observer series on flooding spawned by Hurricane Floyd that was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.

Keith Kloor is a magazine journalist based in New York City. A senior editor at Audubon magazine until recently, Kloor has been published as a freelancer by Audubon as well as Science, Archaeology and Smithsonian, among others. His work reflects a multidisciplinary approach to environmental issues, looking at science and public policy through a historical, social, and political lens. His recent projects include examining the impacts of environmental constraints on prehistoric Indian cultures.

Chris Welsch is a senior reporter and photographer at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He has reported and photographed in more than 40 countries on six continents, writing on a variety of travel and news topics. He has won several Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards and a 2004 Society for News Design Award of Excellence for photography.

For more information about the program, contact Len Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism, University of Colorado at 303-492-0459, ackland@colorado.edu or www.colorado.edu/journalism/cej/cej/scripps_fellowships/index.html