CAMtastic Newsletter November 2025

SIU Journalism Students Report Abroad Through Pulitzer Center Fellowship

By Journey Short, Charlotte Thompson Suhler School of Journalism and Advertising

The tradition of Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Pulitzer grantees lives on. This year, the Daily Egyptian’s editor-in-chief and news editor took their storytelling abroad through the Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium program. 
 
The Pulitzer “Campus Consortium” program gives students from partnered campuses the opportunity to pursue their own story ideas and to “engage with students and faculty on the critical global issues of our time.” 
 
I had the chance to interview two out of three of this year's fellows: Daily Egyptian Editor-in-Chief Lylee Gibbs, a senior studying photojournalism, and News Editor Jackson Brandhorst, a journalism major. 
 
Both students worked on different stories from outside the country. 
 
Brandhorst is investigating an American development company that wants to extract limestone from Andros Island in the Bahamas to help turn the island into more of a tourist attraction — a plan scientists and environmentalists warn could ruin its freshwater supply. He traveled there over the summer to cover both sides of the story and recently returned to continue his reporting. 
 
“So it's about the exposure of the issue to other people that could maybe literally do something about it,” Brandhorst said. “You know, I can't do anything about it. All I can do is tell the story.”
 
Gibbs and recent graduate Enan Chediak traveled to Peru to a small Indigenous community called Muniches. The community has a significantly higher rate of diabetes because residents eat a lot of white rice, which can spike blood sugar levels due to its high glycemic index. Gibbs and Chediak investigated a strain of rice developed by a Louisiana State researcher that could be more diabetic-friendly because it’s high in protein and low on the glycemic index.

Gibbs said the fellowship allowed her to gain new experiences outside the country, strengthen her résumé, and create work she hopes will be shared with the people living in Peru.

“I hope just like a solid body of work that will look good in my portfolio, but also like, I don't know, just something that is put together,” Gibbs said. “I've never done anything out of the country, so it was a good learning experience, but I also hope the people that are from the village that we were at somehow are able to read it, like maybe we can get it translated and shared”. 
 
Both Brandhorst and Gibbs said that professors at Southern Illinois University Carbondale motivated them to apply for the grant. This includes Assistant Professor Julia Rendleman, who leads the Pulitzer Campus Consortium for SIU Carbondale. 
 
Rendleman, who was also a fellow when she attended graduate school at SIU Carbondale, said her biggest hope is that more students apply for the fellowship opportunity.  
 
“What I want to see is every student operating at a caliber where they're competitive for this opportunity every year,” she said. “That's my goal.”
 
Along with the grant funding, the fellows and Rendleman recently traveled to the nation’s capital for the organization’s “Washington Weekend,” where participants meet one another, receive mentorship and make valuable connections.
 
“You're a fellow for life,” Brandhorst said. “It's a resource that we always will have.”