The UConn Journalism Department is proud to have three student winners or recent grads in the 2025 Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists’ statewide contest.

• Kwasi Osei-Amankwah, a 2025 journalism graduate, won a second place in the Business category for his story on how Connecticut’s 2025 college grads were contemplating an uncertain economy.
• Read it here: https://ctcommunitynews.org/2025/05/09/connecticuts-new-college-grads-contemplate-an-uncertain-economy/

• Karla Perez took second place in the Education category for her profile of Sandy Hook survivor Lenie Urbina.
• Read it here: https://ctcommunitynews.org/2025/07/17/passing-a-milestone-a-sandy-hook-survivor-looks-back-and-ahead/

• Julia Gillego won a second-place award in the In-Depth Local Reporting for her story on last year's housing crunch at UConn.
• Read it here: https://ctcommunitynews.substack.com/p/uconn-students-confront-housing-crisis 

Kwasi, Karla and Julia had their work published at CT Community News through the CT Student Journalism Collaborative, a nonprofit that was created in 2023 by leaders of the UConn Journalism Department and other journalism departments across Connecticut to see their best student journalism published professionally.

Brad Tuttle, an assistant professor in the UConn Journalism Department, gave a fascinating presentation in Storrs about how he incorporated the use of Artificial Intelligence in his Journalism Ethics course this semester.

Working in groups on reporting and writing a news story, his students used AI to brainstorm ideas, find sources to interview, write one version of a story, compare it to a version they wrote and to then edit their work. They also had to evaluate which uses were ethical or not. Their conclusion was that it was most useful and ethical to use AI to correct their grammar and spelling and to prepare questions before an interview, but not to ”put words in their mouths."

Brad was presenting as part of mAI dAI, a daylong workshop organized by UConn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.