Frannie Sprouls wins Student Impact Award

A College of Journalism and Mass Communications student, Frannie Sprouls, received the Officer of the Year Award at the Student Impact Awards banquet April 9 in the Nebraska Union. Faculty member Rick Alloway was a finalist in the Adviser of the Year category. The awards honor leaders in additional categories of outstanding student president of the year, student member of the year, new adviser of the year and student program of the year.

Frannie is vice president of the American Copy Editors Society chapter. Professor Alloway is adviser of Boots and Cats, a female a cappella group. Both are officially recognized student organizations at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Frannie is a junior journalism major, with minors in German and history, from Cottage Grove, Minn. She knew the University of Nebraska was the school for her when she toured the journalism college the summer before her senior year of high school.

Her journalism career began at the Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper, as a reporter. She spent two years as a beat reporter, covering RHA, ASUN and NU Board of Regents. In 2012, she received seventh place in the Hearst Breaking News competition for her story on bedbugs in the residence halls. In May 2012, she traveled to India with professors Bruce Thorson and Scott Winter on a photojournalism trip as one of two reporters on the trip. She is currently helping edit and design the magazine for the trip, titled “India’s Forsaken.”

Frannie’s real passion is not for reporting, however, but for editing. She is currently the copy desk chief at the Daily Nebraskan and spent the summer of 2012 rewriting and editing the DN Stylebook. Next year, she will be the associate news editor at the DN. She sends out weekly emails and organizing fundraisers to send members to national conferences.  She is also a writer/editor at the Nebraska Transportation Center (NTC), where she writes and edits newsletter articles and tech briefs.

Aside from editing stories, Frannie is also a production assistant for Prairie Schooner’s Air Schooner, a literary podcast. She works with Scott Winter, her UCARE adviser, on the project by editing clips from interviews, contacting potential interviewees and creating episodes for Air Schooner’s Reading Series. This project combines her love of editing and production with her love of literature and writing. For her honors thesis, she will be taking the knowledge she learned from Air Schooner and creating a podcast of her own.

This summer, Frannie will be traveling to England for two weeks in May to study King Arthur's genesis with Dr. Karen Lyons and a few honors students. She will be using information from the trip for her podcast. After returning from England, Frannie will be a copy editing intern at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, Ark.

During her free time, Frannie likes to knit, drink Earl Grey tea and buy used books. She also likes to write short fiction stories and has participated in National Novel Writing Month the past four years. Out of everyone she left behind in Minnesota, she misses her basset hound Cheese the most.

Professor Alloway began teaching at UNL in July of 1986. In addition, he is the general manager for the university's audio properties, 90.3 KRNU and the KRNU2 webstream.

Since 1995, he was produced and hosted “Vocal Chords” - an a cappella music program and webcast - on 90.3 KRNU, and he created and hosts “Campus Voices,” the station's weekly half-hour public affairs series.

Rick is a free-lance voice-over and narration producer, and his voice is heard on a variety of commercials, documentaries and long-form narrations. He maintains a blog about media trends on Tumblr.