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W&L Senior Awarded Fellowship from Virginia SPJ,SDX Educational Foundation

Athena (Yue) Cao, a rising senior from Beijing, China, has been awarded one of two 2015 journalism summer fellowships from the Virginia SPJ,SDX Educational Foundation.

The fellowships provide financial support of a summer newsroom internship for students attending a Virginia college or university and showing outstanding prospects for a career in journalism. Recipients are chosen through a competitive application process during the spring semester of the junior or sophomore year.

A business journalism major, Cao is performing her summer internship at The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. She served previous internships with the Richmond Times-Dispatch business staff, The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C., and Phoenix Media in China. During the previous winter and spring terms, Cao studied Chinese politics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

A native of Beijing, she spent a high school year as an exchange student in Youngstown, Ohio, at the age of 15, before graduating from Beijing National Day School.

The Virginia SPJ,SDX Educational Foundation is an independent non-profit organization created by the Society of Professional Journalists, Virginia Pro Chapter. Since 1971, it has awarded more than 80 scholarships totaling some $100,000 to promising college journalists from across the commonwealth. Washington and Lee students have been among the most frequent scholarship/fellowship winners during the program’s existence.

Fellowship applications for summer 2016 will be due Dec. 31. For more information, visit spjva.com/fellowships/.