Elissa Nadworny
Elissa Nadworny reports on all things college for NPR, following big stories like unprecedented enrollment declines, college affordability, the student debt crisis and workforce training. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she traveled to dozens of campuses to document what it was like to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. Her work has won several awards including a 2020 Gracie Award for a story about student parents in college, a 2018 James Beard Award for a story about the Chinese-American population in the Mississippi Delta and a 2017 Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in innovation.
Nadworny uses multiplatform storytelling – incorporating radio, print, comics, photojournalism, and video — to put students at the center of her coverage. Some favorite story adventures include crawling in the sewers below campus to test wastewater for the coronavirus, yearly deep-dives into the most popular high school plays and musicals and an epic search for the history behind her classroom skeleton.
Before joining NPR in 2014, Nadworny worked at Bloomberg News, reporting from the White House. A recipient of the McCormick National Security Journalism Scholarship, she spent four months reporting on U.S. international food aid for USA Today, traveling to Jordan to talk with Syrian refugees about food programs there.
Originally from Erie, Pa., Nadworny has a bachelor's degree in documentary film from Skidmore College and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
-
Congress hit pause on federal student loan payments in the CARES Act. The latest extension of this relief will last until after President-elect Joe Biden takes office. -
As Thanksgiving break approaches, many schools are seeing spikes in coronavirus cases. Some campuses are using students to work the phones as contact tracers. -
The Trump administration has often been openly hostile to colleges. With a President Biden, the federal government's approach to higher education seems almost certainly to be less confrontational.
-
Young adults are preparing to travel home for Thanksgiving, but the coronavirus is making things complicated. Epidemiologists say there are things families can to do reduce the risk of infection.
-
As coronavirus cases surge across the U.S., college students are nearing Thanksgiving break. But going home is complicated this year. We discuss how colleges ensure students' safe travel.
-
Wastewater offers an ideal testing opportunity for colleges: People often poop where they live; colleges know who lives in each dorm; and testing wastewater is a cheaper way to monitor virus spread. -
As colleges across the country see rising coronavirus rates, many campuses have gone into lockdown. Are these lockdowns effective at stopping the spread of the virus?
-
College towns depend on business from the students that attend the school. In places like Ann Arbor, Mich., residents are nervous about returning students bringing the coronavirus with them.
-
In Michigan, there are two big state universities, situated barely an hour apart. Both of them have been stymied in the first weeks of school by the rapid spread of the coronavirus.
-
A look at the state of colleges in Iowa, which has the third-highest number of new infections per capita in the U.S. Iowa State will play its first game of the season in an empty stadium.
