McGill Fellows selected for 2020 Symposium

McGill Fellows selected for 2020 Symposium

March 09, 2021
Diane Murraymurrayd@uga.edu

Twelve students have been named McGill Fellows by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The class, selected by a faculty committee for their strengths in academics, practical experience and leadership, includes 11 undergraduate students and one graduate student, all majoring in journalism.

The McGill Fellows are:

  • Mack Brown (Marietta, Georgia)
  • Alex English (Wiesbaden, Germany)
  • Evan Lasseter (Perry, Georgia)
  • Lexie Little (Kingsport, Tennessee)
  • Olivia Mead (Alpharetta, Georgia)
  • Tylar Norman (Conyers, Georgia)
  • Caroline Odom (Richmond Hill, Georgia)
  • Savannah Sicurella (Daytona Beach, Florida)
  • Henry Queen (Atlanta, Georgia)
  • Augusta Stone (Chickamauga, Georgia)
  • Lauren Swenson (Toccoa, Georgia)
  • Lora Yordanova (Lilburn, Georgia)

The McGill Fellows will participate in the McGill Symposium, which brings together students, faculty and leading journalists to consider what journalistic courage means and how it is exemplified by reporters and editors.

The McGill Symposium will be held over two days on March 18 and March 22. Topics covered include politics, pandemic and social justice. Visiting journalists Rana Ayyub, Washington Post global opinions writer; Stephen Fowler, Georgia Public Broadcasting reporter; Lisa Krieger, San Jose Mercury News science writer and Alyssa Pointer, Atlanta Journal Constitution photojournalist will join the Fellows virtually.

Ayyub will be presented the 2020 McGill medal for journalistic courage during her virtual session. An April 2020 visit to receive the medal was cancelled due to the pandemic.

This is the fourteenth class of McGill Fellows. The first class was selected in 2007.

The Grady College faculty selection committee consisted of Dodie Cantrell, Keith Herndon, Janice Hume, Mark Johnson, Vicki Michaelis and Diane Murray, who directs the McGill program for Journalistic Courage.

For more than 40 years, the McGill Lecture has brought significant figures in journalism to the University of Georgia to honor Ralph McGill’s courage as an editor.

McGill, while editor and publisher of The Atlanta Constitution, was regarded as the “conscience of the south,” using the newspaper’s editorial pages to challenge segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. McGill was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for “long, courageous and effective leadership.”

The McGill Symposium is funded by the McGill Lecture Endowment.