Taylor/Blakeslee Project Fellowships

Awarded competitively to a current or recent Taylor/Blakeslee Graduate Fellows, project fellowships offers a small grant for an independent reporting project.

The program is designed to help early-career science journalists gain important experience by organizing and executing freelance projects at a time when publishers are rarely able to cover the full cost of field reporting of science stories.

In 2019, CASW began offering mentored project fellowships which come with a grant as well as the support of a senior journalist—a previous Taylor/Blakeslee or Haseltine Fellow when possible—as mentor. The mentoring component is intended to help ensure the success of the project and also to build a cross-generational network within the community of Taylor/Blakeslee Fellows.

All project grants are funded by the Chicago-based Brinson Foundation, which provides underwriting for the Taylor/Blakeslee Graduate Fellowships.

Mentored project fellows and mentors

• 2023 James Dinneen (’21)/Zahra Hirji
• 2022 Saima Sidik (’20)/Amy McDermott (’15) (update on Saima’s story)
• 2021 Brett Simpson (’21)/Dan Vergano (update on Brett’s story)
• 2020 Jerimiah Oetting (’19)/Kendall Powell (’01)
• 2019 Joshua Sokol (’14)/Bryn Nelson (’98) and Susie Nielson (’18)/Phil McKenna (’05)

Reporting project fellows

• 2018 Elizabeth Whitman (’17)
• 2017 Jennifer Lu (’16)
• 2017 Amy McDermott (’15)