Connecticut adviser wins 2020 Benz scholarship

Laura Bowe from The King School earns award

Laura Bowe, the yearbook adviser at the King School in Stamford, Connecticut, has been named the 2020 recipient of the Quill and Scroll Lester G. Benz Scholarship.

Bowe has advised the yearbook for four years and has shown promise as one of country’s best young advisers. She has already earned Certified Journalism Educator recognition from the Journalism Education Association despite not having majored in journalism as a student.

Most importantly, she has reinvigorated journalism at the King School through her yearbook program.

“I have initiated a think tank of colleagues to create a formalized journalism program and have created a three-year strategic plan to build up curriculum, professional development and field experiences,” she wrote in her application. “One of these goals is to revive King School’s Quill and Scroll charter.”

Bowe will use the $500 award to take a Poynter Institute seminar on editorial leadership sometime in the next year.

“Laura Bowe has maintained and even improved the journalistic integrity of the 418-page King School yearbook from the standpoint of both editorial copy and the intense levels of proofreading involved,” wrote Jeffrey Wood, her Walsworth yearbook representative. “Laura provides teaching moments in each yearbook meeting for her editors and has asked many questions along the way of me. She is eager to learn as much as she can and impart it to her staff.”