Youngstown Press Club announces scholarship winners from Youngstown State and Penn State
The Youngstown Press Club has announced its scholarship winners for 2024.
Molly Burke, left, a junior at Youngstown State University, and Merrick Morneweck, right, a senior at Penn State University, will each receive a $2,000 scholarship. Both women are journalism majors.
This is the second year for the Youngstown Press Club scholarship program, which is funded by the Frank and Pearl Gelbman Charitable Foundation, club membership dues, proceeds from club events, and gifts from individuals and YPC’s corporate sponsors.
Meet Molly Burke
Burke is a graduate of Ursuline High School, where she competed on the speech and debate team for four years.
She has received multiple awards for her reporting for The Jambar, YSU’s student-run newspaper, where she held several positions, including editor-in-chief.
In February, Burke collaborated with the Youngstown Press Club to organize and lead a Student Press Freedom Day observance at YSU.
A journalism major, Burke is a member of YSU’s Sokolov Honors College and of the university’s chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communications Association’s collegiate honors society. She is also secretary of the university’s chapter of the Society for Collegiate Journalists.
YSU’s communication department gave her the 2024 Drs. Robert R. and Mary Virginia Hare Writing Award for Distinction in Journalistic Writing.
Most recently, Burke became a multimedia content producer at WKBN-TV.
Meet Merrick Morneweck
A native of Mercer, Pa., Morneweck was a writer for the Hoofbeats newspaper at Mercer High School. She plans to graduate from Penn State next spring with a double major in journalism and English.
Having interned at The Butler Eagle newspaper, Morneweck is now a writing intern for the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s website.
She is also a writer and editor for Her Campus at Penn State, an online magazine written by and for college women.
Burke and Morneweck will be recognized for their scholarship awards at the club’s Sept. 25 Hall of Fame and Awards Banquet at Stambaugh Auditorium.