Jami Frantz from Friends University is the Wichita Professional Communicators 2008 scholarship winner. In fact, she won the entire $1,500 offered this year to communications students at Friends, Newman University and Wichita State University. It’s not that the other five applicants (one more from Friends and four from Wichita State) weren’t wonderfully worthy of our scholarship investment. But Jami simply knocked everyone out of the field.

Jami, a senior majoring in communications with a journalism emphasis and minoring in Spanish, is the alumni newsletter editor for the Friends Alumni Office, a job she carried through two semesters as sports editor for the Crimson Chronicle, the Friends student newspaper. She is still with the alumni office and will be the Chronicle’s sports editor again next fall. Jami also has been a reporter for the Chronicle, and a contributing writer to High School Sports The Magazine and Focus magazine.

She got connected to The Wichita Eagle from working on the sports desk phone crew, then serving a winter copy editing internship, and last year working as an intern on the sports copy desk. Jami’s adviser at Friends, Lillian Zier Martell, said The Eagle would have hired her on the spot after the summer 2007 internship but she had a degree to earn first. She is a dedicated student, said Martell, who has consistently demonstrated a great work ethic, excellent writing and photography skills, and an ability to produce large amounts of work in a short time.

Want to help other students like Jami? Donations to the WPC Scholarship Fund are now accepted via PayPal.