Elissa Nadworny
Elissa Nadworny reports on all things college for NPR, following big stories like unprecedented enrollment declines, college affordability, the student debt crisis and workforce training. During the 2020-2021 academic year, she traveled to dozens of campuses to document what it was like to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. Her work has won several awards including a 2020 Gracie Award for a story about student parents in college, a 2018 James Beard Award for a story about the Chinese-American population in the Mississippi Delta and a 2017 Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in innovation.
Nadworny uses multiplatform storytelling – incorporating radio, print, comics, photojournalism, and video — to put students at the center of her coverage. Some favorite story adventures include crawling in the sewers below campus to test wastewater for the coronavirus, yearly deep-dives into the most popular high school plays and musicals and an epic search for the history behind her classroom skeleton.
Before joining NPR in 2014, Nadworny worked at Bloomberg News, reporting from the White House. A recipient of the McCormick National Security Journalism Scholarship, she spent four months reporting on U.S. international food aid for USA Today, traveling to Jordan to talk with Syrian refugees about food programs there.
Originally from Erie, Pa., Nadworny has a bachelor's degree in documentary film from Skidmore College and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
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Husband and wife writing duo Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson say they wanted their show to subvert stereotypes about gender. -
NPR's Elissa Nadworny speaks to Morgan Eutermoser, an emergency room physician, about her experience working through Christmas Day during a COVID-19 surge in Colorado.
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President Biden extended relief for federal student loan borrowers for an additional 90 days because borrowers are "still coping with the impacts of the pandemic." Payments now resume May 1. -
Wesleyan University is among a small group of colleges requiring COVID-19 boosters for spring semester. Will other institutions follow? -
Undergraduates at the school finish their degree with an average of $27,000 in student loan debt. A new program could make that number zero. -
President Biden's infrastructure package includes $65 billion for improving broadband. That money could make a big difference for rural college students, who are especially disconnected. -
The pandemic has seen far fewer students go to college — that trend continued this fall, according to preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. -
The FDA's decision to fully approve Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine has opened the door for a growing number of colleges and universities to mandate the vaccine for their communities this academic year.
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Students across the country are headed back to campus for fall classes. With the delta variant raging, there are questions around how colleges can pull this semester off.
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U.S. colleges are counting on high COVID-19 vaccination rates to keep their campuses safe this fall. Many are pulling out flashy rewards to encourage students and faculty to get their shots.
