2011-2012

Pat Wingert is an award-winning reporter who has spent the last 25 years at Newsweek Magazine covering a wide variety of domestic policy issues, including education, health, children, families, demographics, social trends, politics, crime and the military. She hopes to use her Spencer Fellowship to learn more about the science of learning, and how the country can use education research to improve science and math instruction.

Before coming to Newsweek, Wingert worked as a reporter at both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, including a stint as legendary Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Mike Royko’s legman. She was also the editor of the student newspaper at the University of Illinois-Urbana.

Along with her Newsweek colleague Barbara Kantrowitz, Wingert is the co-author of The Menopause Book (originally published in 2007 as Is It Hot in Here? Or Is It Me?). The book was a finalist for the Quill Award for best health book of 2007 and one of the Library Journal’s Best Consumer Health books. Wingert and Kantrowitz were also the 2009 winners of the Endocrine Society’s Award for Excellence in Science and Medical Journalism, and the longtime coauthors of Newsweek.com’s Her Body column.

She lives in Washington DC with her husband, Brian Kelly, the editor of US News, and their three children.

Published Work:
Making a Better Science Teacher
Pat Wingert studied the nation’s math and science teaching reforms during her year as a Spencer Fellow. Her work was published in the August, 2012 edition of Scientific American.

Give Peace a Chance

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/06/when-school-reformers-and-union-leaders-unite.html

An Offer They Won’t Refuse
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/12/how-one-district-fixed-its-failing-schools.html

Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/05/why-we-must-fire-bad-teachers.html

Schoolyard Brawl
By Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/05/schoolyard-brawl.html

Minority Report
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/18/minority-report.html

An Unlikely Gambler
By Evan Thomas, Pat Wingert and Eve Conant
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/08/22/an-unlikely-gambler.html

Reading Your Baby’s Brain
http://www.newsweek.com/2005/08/14/reading-your-baby-s-mind.html

Learn the Hard Way
http://www.newsweek.com/2003/12/14/learn-the-hard-way.html

The Right Way to Read
http://www.newsweek.com/2002/04/28/the-right-way-to-read.html

Other Topics:
2405 Dead Since Tucson
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/13/2-405-shot-dead-since-tucson.html

Vietnam Demons and John Wheeler
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/15/john-wheeler-s-death-his-vietnam-demons.html

Crazy Talk
Live Your Best Life Ever!
by Wes Kosova and Pat Wingert
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/05/29/live-your-best-life-ever.html

When Adoption Goes Wrong
http://www.newsweek.com/2007/12/08/when-adoption-goes-wrong.html

On Call in Hell
http://www.newsweek.com/2006/03/19/on-call-in-hell.html

Linda Shaw is a reporter at The Seattle Times, where she has written about public schools for more than a decade. She has covered everything from the growth of high-stakes testing and the resegregation of Seattle schools to the demise of cursive hand writing. She helped create and edit two Seattle Times School Guides, which analyzed more than 400 Seattle-area public and private schools and received awards from the Education Writers Association, the National Council for Educational Measurement and other organizations. In 2008, the Education Writers Association named her national beat reporter of the year for large newspapers.

She used her fellowship to look deeply at the education initiatives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and how the foundation is influencing public schools. Her work was published in The Seattle Times, June 8, 2013:
Gates Foundation Looking to Make Nice to Teachers, first in a series

Shaw is a graduate of Stanford University and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She’s worked as a copy editor and editor as well as a reporter, and as a high school student in southern California, led an effort to publish the school’s first – and perhaps last – student evaluation of teachers.

 

Radio journalist Trey Kay created and produces Us & Them a provocative and highly successful podcast on the culture wars in the United States.

In 2009, Kay produced the radio documentary “The Great Textbook War,” which was honored with a George Foster Peabody Award, a national Edward R. Murrow Award, and a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton. He also collaborated on a traveling exhibit called Books and Beliefs, a companion piece for documentary. In 2005, Kay shared in another Peabody for his contribution to Studio 360’s “American Icons: Moby Dick” program.

During his Spencer Fellowship year, Kay reported and produced a radio documentary on “The Long Game” about the Texas textbook controversy, which was broadcast on local and national public radio stations throughout the country. He also wrote a book proposal expanding on his “Great American Textbook War” reporting.

His work has been recognized with two New York Festivals Awards: “I’m Not A Doctor, But I Play One At The Holiday Inn” (This American Life) and “A Beautiful Symphony of Brotherhood: A Musical Journey in the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.” (WNYC and NPR). He has been an associate producer for “News Wars: Secrets, Sources and Spin,” a two-hour report for PBS Frontline. Kay produced segments for Marketplace, Weekend America, Day to Day, Morning Edition, and The Next Big Thing.