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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The conflict has heightened tensions on U.S. campuses. What is the role and responsibility of colleges right now? -
The Biden administration is cracking down on for-profit college programs that don't adequately prepare graduates for gainful employment and leave them with unaffordable loans. -
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. -
Only a small portion of U.S. colleges have selective admissions, where race-conscious admissions can make a difference in who gets in. But the impacts of banning affirmative action are far wider. -
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 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. -
For many in Ukraine, the tradition of plunging into an icy body of water on Epiphany, which marks the day of Jesus' baptism, serves as a reminder that the new year represents a fresh start. -
Hundreds of mourners gathered for the funeral of Mykhailo Korenovsky, a beloved boxing coach and father who was killed in a missile strike on an apartment building in Dnipro, Ukraine. -
Rescuers have been racing to find survivors at an apartment complex attacked by Russian forces on Saturday. At least 40 people were killed, and more than 25 others are missing and feared dead. -
Control of Soledar could allow Russia to cut off Ukrainian supply lines to nearby Bakhmut, another fiercely contested city seen as central to Russia's struggling efforts to control eastern Ukraine.
