NPR Education Reporter to Headline 10th Anniversary Celebration

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Claudio Sanchez

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Claudio Sanchez, education correspondent for National Public Radio, will be the featured speaker at the 10^th Anniversary Celebration of the Lemke Journalism Project. The event will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 9, at the Springdale High School Performing Arts Center.

The Lemke Journalism Project is a series of workshops for northwest Arkansas high school students interested in writing about diversity issues. The program trains high school students to be better media consumers and identifies those who want to go into journalism as a profession. The program is conducted by the Walter J. Lemke department of journalism and the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Science at the University of Arkansas.

The 10^th anniversary celebration will recognize the contributions of this year’s class of students, as well as those of the students, journalism professionals, educators and others who have supported the project for 10 years.

Special recognition will be paid to the Tyson Foods Foundation, which recently donated $250,000 to ensure the Lemke Project will continue for another decade and beyond.

Anyone with an interest in the Lemke Journalism Project is welcome to attend. 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.

Claudio Sanchez is a former elementary and middle school teacher who 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-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 Paso Press 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.