Marie Parsons (on right) and Dr. Jennifer Greer receive the JEA Diversity Award.

JEA mentor Marie Parsons (on left) and Dr. Jennifer Greer, chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Alabama, 
received the JEA Diversity Award at the JEA/NSPA convention in Anaheim in April for the school’s 28-year-old 
Multicultural Journalism Workshop. Parsons is founding director of the 
workshop.

More than 600 high school students interested in journalism have attended the 10-day summer Multicultural Journalism Workshop on the University of Alabama campus. The program helps students learn to produce news in a multicultural society for print, broadcast and online journalism platforms.

Parsons recounted that the program began the first year with just four students who weren’t interested in writing. “The second was a resounding success with 20 black and Asian students spending an entire hour in the state capitol office, interviewing none other than Gov. George Wallace,” Parsons reported.

Meredith Cummings is director of the Multicultural Journalism Program and the Alabama Scholastic Press Association.

At the convention, Parsons and Greer led a session on “Preparing Young Journalists for a Multicultural World” with strategies they use in the summer diversity workshop.

Editor’s note: Mentoring Monday is a feature on the JEA Mentoring blog. We’d like to feature photos of short stories about the JEA mentors, their mentees and the high school journalism students. Please send your photo, caption and story to 2jdodd (at) gmail (dot) com.