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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Ukraine's atomic power operator said power lines had been restored to the Zaporizhzhia plant and that they were preparing the reactor to be cooled and transferred to a safer state. -
Ukrainian officials claim to have taken Izium, Balakliya and Kupiansk — all of which have been controlled by Russian forces for months. -
To stop Russian forces from advancing to Kyiv, the Ukrainian military blew up a dam, flooding a nearby village. Seven months later, residents are still pumping water out of yards and houses. -
As a stalemate sets in on Ukraine's eastern front line, a city lives in limbo with constant shelling, limited fuel and spotty utilities. The government ordered evacuations but some residents remain. -
A mission to understand what's happening at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe is underway amid renewed shelling and mounting fears of a potential nuclear accident.
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Russia invaded Ukraine six months ago. In that time, thousands of people have been killed, cities destroyed, millions of people displaced and the Ukrainian economy has been battered. -
Requirements to test and mask and be vaccinated are becoming less common as colleges shift away from treating COVID-19 as an emergency. -
Megan Miranda's latest summer thriller, The Last to Vanish, is set in a small hiking town in North Carolina, where 7 people have disappeared in the woods. Were they all accidents or was it something more sinister? -
NPR's Elissa Nadworny speaks with Mary Ziegler of the UC Davis School of Law about uncertainties and likely legal battles in post-Roe America.
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Kenny Butler and Daniel Duron worked toward their degrees while in prison. Their journey could become more common with Pell grants becoming available to incarcerated people.
