Clayton High School Journalism Teacher Erin Sucher-O’Grady is the recipient of a 2018 S’Park Media Mentor Award from Ithaca College’s Roy H. Park School of Communications. The S’Park Awards recognize high school teachers and advisors from across the country who are committed to igniting a passion for media in their students.
Sucher-O’Grady is the advisor of the CHS Globe Newsmagazine, which has garnered several national awards during her tenure, including the Brasler Prize — the scholastic equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize — in 2016 and 2017 and the 2015 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for the Globe’s coverage of protests in Ferguson. The Columbia Scholastic Press Association named Sucher-O’Grady a distinguished advisor in 2018, and the Journalism Education Association named her Missouri Teacher of the Year in 2016.
As an S’Park Media Mentor Award recipient, Sucher-O’Grady was invited to an award dinner and reception at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. While on campus, she met the advisors and managers of the Park School’s own nationally acclaimed student media outlets and learned about the Park Scholar Program, which provides full-cost-of-attendance scholarships for communications students.
“The Park School is privileged to sponsor many great speakers and events, but the S’Park Media Mentor Awards program is my favorite,” said Diane Gayeski, dean of the Park School. “Each of our awardees inspires high school students to see media as powerful tools to shape the society that they will inherit, and they instill a culture of excellence in their cohorts. Over the years, the mentors have become a wonderful pipeline for some of our most talented students and we appreciate the opportunity to forge relationships with students who may not otherwise have heard of Ithaca College or thought that a Park School degree could be in their futures.”
In addition to serving as the adviser to the Globe, Sucher-O’Grady is also the Missouri state director of the Journalism Education Association.
