On Oct. 18, 2025, eight of our Centennial journalism students attended the Maryland-DC Scholastic Press Association’s Fall Intensive Workshop at the University of Maryland to discover new ways to improve The Wingspan.
The students who attended the conference were Editor-in-Chief Emma Liu, Managing Editor Teju Reddi, Arts and Entertainment Editor Christine Ma, Feature Editor Blythe Zheng, News Editor Haley Hunt, Social Media Manager Hannah Elpus, and writers Sukaina Hussain and Sahil Prasad.
They were accompanied by journalism teacher and advisor Rus VanWestervelt, who encouraged his writers to attend the conference.
“It emboldens them to see themselves as journalists as well, not just for a class, not just to write an article and then be done with it, but to actually understand the power of journalism at the high school level,” he explained.
Attendees could choose to partake in two different sessions, one in the morning and afternoon. Sessions included Writing for an Audience, Graphics and Design, Social Media, AI, Photography, and Leadership.
Reddi attended the sessions “Ramping Up Graphics & Design” and “Student Leadership of Publications.” Being the Managing Editor of Wingspan, she is faced with leadership roles daily, and through the workshops she learned more about how to be a better leader.
She shared that the workshop’s idea of creating a staff manual was monumental in terms of organization, and she also gained ideas of what to put in the manual for Wingspan.
Hunt attended “Writing for an Audience” and “Student Leadership of Publications.” She found the leadership session to be most valuable, similarly to Reddi.
“I learned some good leadership skills; I feel like I can better lead my little group of news writers,” Hunt explained.
The Centennial students were also able to meet with Alan Weintraut, who manages the A-Blast, another student-run newspaper, and speaks at local, state, and national journalism conventions.
He looked over print copies of previous editions of The Wingspan and gave Wingspan staff members feedback on how to improve it.
“It was really nice to see how high of a standard our newspaper was already in,” Reddi said.
“The audience wants a personal feel to their local high school paper; that’s what draws them in and what builds our community,” Hunt learned.
Both Reddi and Hunt share the sentiment that the conference was more than just an event to learn more about journalism. It will help improve the standards of The Wingspan moving forward.
“It was really nice to step back, take information, apply it to my own thing, and then look at it from an outside perspective,” Reddi said.
“I started putting Wingspan in a picture in my brain and I was like everything that she said, I started applying it to my own newspaper publication,” Reddi referenced Megan Fromm, one of the presenters at the conference.
VanWestervelt emphasized the importance of networking at conferences such as this one.
“It is a statewide conference that allows our journalists to network and see what . . . the best journalism programs across the state are doing to get ideas.”
He also shared that networking goes both ways, and now state journalism programs get to have The Wingspan on their radar.
Liu noted how the conference fell on No Kings Day.
“Especially in our political environment, journalism has become more important than ever,” she explained.
“I think having individuals who only attend conferences like these, or people who go out of their way and host workshops such as the one that UMD did, is so extremely vital to the democracy and to the well being of our society.”
The Wingspan plans to attend the annual “J-Day Conference” on March 27 at the University of Maryland, with hopes to build on the knowledge acquired from the first conference.
