Each year, RTDNAC awards two Dr. John R. Bittner Scholarships, each for $1,000, to currently-enrolled rising juniors or seniors in the Carolinas who are pursuing a major course of study with emphasis in broadcast or electronic journalism.
Two $1,000 scholarships, provided by RTDNAC and WRAL-TV, are awarded to a qualified student attending a college or university in North Carolina, and to a qualified student enrolled in a college or university in South Carolina.
The scholarship is named after the late Dr. John Robert Bittner, a professor at the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who served as executive director of RTDNAC.
2009 winners
Dannika Lewis
Elon University
Dannika Lewis, of Sykesville, Md., is a senior broadcast journalism major at Elon University, where she has served as vice president of the university’s chapter of RTDNA. She is also one of 25 communications majors selected for the Class of 2010 Journalism and Communications Fellow.
Lewis spent the summer of 2009 as an intern for CBS Evening News’ medical unit in New York, where she assisted in research, writing, field shoot, logging, scripting and editing for both Evening News packages and on contributions to CBSNews.com’s Doc Dot Com.
At Elon, she serves as a foreign correspondent and director of marketing for Phenix 14 News. As part of her position, she was assigned in Madrid, Spain, where she self-produced and translated news pieces.
Jessica Lyn Silvaggio
University of South Carolina
Jessica Lyn Silvaggio, of Boiling Springs, S.C., is a senior broadcast journalism major at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, where she works as a copywriter and editor for Student Gamecock Television and serves as a Supreme Court justice for South Carolina Student Legislature.
Silvaggio spent the summer of 2009 as an intern at CNN in its medical unit and “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. She also interned at WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, S.C., and WIS-TV in Columbia, S.C.