Arnetta Garcin Memorial Scholarship

At its Jan. 25, 2020 meeting, the JEANC board unanimously voted to allow only one entry per school for both the JEA JOY contest and the JEANC Arnetta Garcin Scholarship.

For a student to compete for the Arnetta Garcin Scholarship, the student’s adviser must be a JEANC member.

JEANC honors the top high school journalism students in Northern California each year by awarding scholarships based on the quality of online journalism portfolios submitted to the judging committee that also selects the California Journalist of the Year.

To be eligible for the scholarship, the student’s adviser must be a member of JEANC. The committee selects the first (Arnetta Garcin Scholarship, $1000), second ($600), and third ($400) place entries for scholarship awards.

This competition is also run in conjunction with California Journalist of the Year competition. The winner is automatically entered in the Journalism Education Association national Journalist of the Year competition.

The first place portfolio award presented to the Northern California student is known as the Arnetta Garcin Scholarship, named after a JEANC Board member whose untimely and sudden death in January 2002 shocked her students and colleagues.

Arnetta Garcin, MJE, was the journalism teacher and newspaper adviser for 32 years at Lynnbrook High School in San Jose and an adjunct English instructor at De Anza College in Cupertino. Ms. Garcin was a leader in the Fremont Union High School District, serving as the chair of the mentor committee for many years and leading the way in the use of technology in the classroom.

She became a JEANC Board member in the early 1990s and served two two-year terms as the organization’s president from 1996 through 1999. Ms. Garcin was recipient of the Dow Jones Distinguished Teacher of the Year award in 1997 and the JEA Medal of Merit Award in 1999. She was JEA State Director for northern California before her death.

Ms. Garcin was invited by the Estonia Ministry of Culture and Education to prepare and present a 10-day journalism education institute in July and August of 1995. With the assistance of four of her students and another JEANC Board member, James Shuman, she helped a group of 12 teachers and 20 students develop a journalism curriculum within the country’s secondary school system.

She became recognized for her scholastic journalism work statewide and nationally. She was a major contributor to Journalism: Model Curriculum, Guidelines, a 1993 publication, and A Framework for Journalism Education, a 1999 publication, both developed jointly by JEANC and SCJEA. Ms. Garcin also worked relentlessly in an unsuccessful attempt to have the UC system include high school journalism courses as English AP courses.

During her service as a board member and president, she was highly admired and respected by her peers. She was passionately dedicated to scholastic journalism and to improving the standards by which students attained journalism education. It was this dedication and her tireless efforts in scholastic journalism that prompted the JEANC Board to honor her by naming the first place scholarship award to the Northern California Journalist of the Year after her.