Elissa Nadworny
Elissa Nadworny reports on all things college for NPR, following big stories like unprecedented enrollment declines, college affordability, the student debt crisis and workforce training. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she traveled to dozens of campuses to document what it was like to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. Her work has won several awards including a 2020 Gracie Award for a story about student parents in college, a 2018 James Beard Award for a story about the Chinese-American population in the Mississippi Delta and a 2017 Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in innovation.
Nadworny uses multiplatform storytelling – incorporating radio, print, comics, photojournalism, and video — to put students at the center of her coverage. Some favorite story adventures include crawling in the sewers below campus to test wastewater for the coronavirus, yearly deep-dives into the most popular high school plays and musicals and an epic search for the history behind her classroom skeleton.
Before joining NPR in 2014, Nadworny worked at Bloomberg News, reporting from the White House. A recipient of the McCormick National Security Journalism Scholarship, she spent four months reporting on U.S. international food aid for USA Today, traveling to Jordan to talk with Syrian refugees about food programs there.
Originally from Erie, Pa., Nadworny has a bachelor's degree in documentary film from Skidmore College and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
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Fentanyl-related teen overdose deaths nearly tripled from 2019 to 2021. As the school year gets under way, families in mourning urge education leaders to respond. -
Wesleyan University will end its practice of legacy admissions, which gives preference to children of alumni. This comes after the Supreme Court's decision to ban race-conscious college admissions.
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The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on affirmative action renewed calls for elite institutions to eliminate "legacy" admissions — or granting advantages to the children of people who attended.
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As college tuition continues to rise, families are trying to figure out where their kids will go to college and how they'll pay for it.
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Broken glass, empty desks and a love story: War brought upheaval, scattering classmates across the world. Here's how they're settling in after schooling, friendships and families were uprooted. -
The Russian invasion spread families of one kindergarten class in Kharkiv across the world and forced families to make choices about how to deal with trauma manifesting in the country's youngest.
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Millions of elderly Ukrainians have remained behind since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. The country has the highest proportion of elderly affected by war. -
The Russian invasion has cemented the decision for many couples to opt out of having babies, in a country that struggled with incredibly low fertility rates long before the war. -
An elderly couple who survived a Russian air strike in a town on the front lines in Ukraine celebrate the electricity and water they once again have.
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In the past few days, Ukraine saw an attack on an apartment building and a helicopter crash that killed a government official.
