Two Mass Communications students earn special scholarships for fall 2013

Two Southern University Mass Communications students were recipients of scholarships from different groups.

Beatriz Alfaro was awarded the Alice Coleman Brown Memorial Scholarship and Raees Malik received the Baton Rouge Area Associate Black Journalist Scholarship.

Alfaro, from Houston, is the first Mass Communication student to receive the $1,500 A.C.B Memorial Scholarship. The award has been given to SU students since 2008. The funding will be awarded for the fall 2013 fall semester.

“I was very surprised I won the scholarship. I couldn't believe I had really won,” said Alfaro, a member of the famed SU Dancing Dolls for the past three years. “I felt very proud and grateful; a scholarship of any amount is a blessing to all college students.”

Alfaro’s scholarship is named in memory of Southern graduate Alice Coleman Brown, who taught grade school students for 30 years.  Brown, who earned a degree in Elementary Education, taught at several schools in Lafayette, and was one of the first teachers and coordinators of the Head Start Program in Lafayette and St. Martin Parish.

After retirement she served as a volunteer tutor and religion teacher. She died May 1, 2007.

The purpose of the scholarship program, managed by Brown’s granddaughter and SU alumna Kimberly L. Green, is to inspire and financially assist promising students who are enrolled in Southern.

Raees Malik is the first recipient of the Baton Rouge Area Association Black Journalist scholarship. The $2,000 award was presented recently by BRAABJ President Michelle McCalope.

The scholarship can be used to offset school tuition or pay for a trip to the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Orlando in July.

The BRAABJ scholarship is based on a student’s grade point average, their progress in the mass communications department and need, McCalope said. The student must also write a essay as part of the entry criteria.

Malik, a graduate of Northeast High School in Chaneyville, said receiving the black journalist group’s first scholarship “is a big honor…that I didn’t expect to win.”

He said, it is an even bigger honor “knowing I am the first Southern University recipient of this scholarship.”

An African-American journalism student from LSU was also chosen to receive a similar scholarship.