Hazeltine experience changed scholars’ outlooks

Photo by Andrew Prinsen

2007 Hazeltine scholar Andrew Prinsen (right) spent last fall documenting life in India.

As the School of Journalism adds and adapts courses to enhance students’ global experiences, aspects of the nearly 30-year-old Ross Hazeltine Travel Scholarship may serve as a model.

Since 1978, the scholarship has awarded 32 new graduates the chance to report from far-flung places, to hone their journalism skills as well as to take on new parts of the world as their beats. They’ve traveled to the Soviet Union, China, India, Haiti, Spain and Latvia, among others.

Hazeltine, B.S. ’38 (business), set up the scholarship as part of his estate to send those with freshly-minted degrees outside North America to better understand other cultures and people. The Columbus, Ind., native learned that lesson himself through the U.S. Army’s “scholarship.” As a student, he worked for the Arbutus and IDS, and, after collecting his business degree, wrote for United Press in Chicago and worked for the Washington Bureau of the Indianapolis News.

Courtesy IU Archives

Ross Hazeltine’s 1938 Arbutus photo.

When World War II started, Hazeltine became a public relations officer who worked with correspondents, facilitating their work and often accompanying them on assignments. Several of his own dispatches appeared in the Columbus Republic and Indianapolis Times and News, where he recounted a close call near the frontlines in France and working at the same headquarters as Ernie Pyle.

Hazeltine returned after the war to continue his work. He died in 1975, directing his estate to fund the travel scholarship.

Submersing himself in life in India last fall, Andrew Prinsen, B.A.J. ’07, said he has benefited from the kind of experience Ross Hazeltine may have had in mind.

“My subject matter has taught me a lot about writing for and about the ‘the common man,’ something that I believe we must constantly strive toward,” said the writer and photojournalist who has been blogging and posting photos on the school Web site. He has traveled throughout the country, interviewing and photographing people from leprosy patients to expert doctors, from vendors at markets to seatmates on trains.

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Laura Zaczek, B.A.J. ‘05

“I’ve been thrown into writing stories of my own choosing, without any sort of editor telling me what or what not do, all in a place that is very foreign and unfamiliar,” he said via e-mail. “This approach causes you to ‘grow up’ really fast as a journalist, which is great because it is a jump-start into professionalism.”

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Nanci Hellmich, B.A. ‘80

Prinsen said he’s sure this global perspective will make him a better messenger no matter where he ends up writing in the future.

Laura Zaczek, B.A.J. ’05, said she discovered her Hazeltine experience in China in 2005 is one reason her current employer, Christian Booksellers Association, considered her a strong candidate for the job.

“I honed skills in China I continue to use in my job, such as how to effectively communicate without a common language, plan events across an ocean, develop a Web site and creatively solve a lot of odd problems,” said Zaczek, who works with CBA clients to develop business ideas.

Courtesy photo Grzegorz Mehring

Dennis Chamberlain, BA’83, now an Iowa State professor, will lead students to Poland this summer for a trip that echoes his Hazeltine experience.

Nanci Hellmich, B.A. ’80, spent her summer studying women’s magazines in Great Britain, learning how they struggled to create quality publications with limited resources. Afterward, she worked at Florida Today, a Gannett paper, and was invited to sign on to USA Today just a year after that national newspaper launched. There, she has worked as a Life section reporter almost 25 years, covering diet, nutrition and fitness, “a job I absolutely love,” she said.

“The lesson I learned from the Hazeltine is the example that the British magazine editors set: to improve and expand the product with the resources you have.”

Dennis Chamberlin, B.A. ’83, M.F.A. ‘05, also still lives by lessons learned during his Hazeltine experience in Poland, what he calls “the most important event that determined my path in life in the years that followed.”

After the scholarship, he worked in the U.S. as a newspaper reporter but eventually moved to Poland, where amid the turmoil and dramatic political change in that country in the 1980s, he worked for a Solidarity party weekly.

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Photojournalist Gary Bogdon, B.A. ‘86, joked with boxer Muhammad Ali when Bodgon was covering an awards ceremony in Orlando several years ago. Both Bogdon and Ali grew up in Louisville.

Eventually, he returned to the U.S., received a master’s of fine arts from IU in 2005 and now teaches photojournalism and multimedia at Iowa State University. And, he’s bringing his Hazeltine experience full circle: He’s preparing a study abroad program to Poland this summer.

“I’d like to think that perhaps one of my students will find the few weeks traveling the back roads of that country as eye-opening as I did in 1983,” he said.

Like Andrew Prinsen, Gary Bogdon, B.A. ’86, traveled to India to photograph Bombay’s “untouchables,” as the street people were known. His experience solidified his commitment to photojournalism, and he worked as staff photographer for several newspapers, shooting subjects from orphans in Russia to hurricane devastation to daily events in small communities. He now is a contributor to several magazines.

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Sally Baker McCarty, B.A. ‘85

Sally Baker McCarty, B.A. ’85, traveled to the Soviet Union, exploring the language, the geography and the local culture of several Soviet states. Today, McCarty is a consumer advocate in Indianapolis, working in the medical field and standing up for “the little guy,” she said. Her inspiration in battles that often seem unwinnable is rooted in lessons learned while living among the people of the 1980s Soviet Union.

“I think the strongest influence that my Hazeltine experience has had on my life is it’s impact on how I define ‘success,’” she said. “While the language study was important and valuable, I learned more from the hours spent talking and visiting the Russian people than one could ever learn in a classroom.”