Kellie Woodhouse won seventh place and a $500 scholarship in the 2008 Hearst Journalism Awards Spot News Competition, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation announced Tuesday.

Woodhouse won for her story on the sexual assaults of two women in College Park in one morning, attacks that police believed were related to a dozen assaults and peeping Tom incidents over the preceding year.

Police had informally named the attacker “the cuddler,” since he has cuddled with or kissed some of his victims while they were sleeping.

Woodhouse’’s story appeared in the March 4, 2008, edition of The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper on campus. Her winning story was selected from 72 entries from 43 universities across the nation.

The Hearst Journalism Awards, sometimes referred to as the Pulitzers of collegiate journalism, are conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication and are fully funded and administered by the W. R. Hearst Foundation. The program consists of six monthly writing competitions, three photojournalism competitions, four broadcast news competitions, and one multimedia competition, with Championship finals in all divisions (except multimedia).

Philip Merrill College of Journalism Associate Professor Susan Moeller has been named a 2008 Carnegie Scholar - one of 20 Americans honored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She is the first University of Maryland faculty member to be so named. Scholars are selected for their “compelling ideas and commitment to enriching the quality of the public dialogue on Islam.” Moeller will receive a two year grant worth $100,000 along with “intellectual support to well-established and promising young thinkers, analysts and writers.”
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