Mercy Honors Media Studies Students and Media Professionals at its 35th Annual Quill Awards

On April 30, Mercy College held its 35th Annual Quill Awards Ceremony to pay tribute to outstanding student achievement in the Media Studies Program.

Some 80 award certificates were presented to 54 students for extraordinary performance in their coursework. Awards were given for journalism, film/culture, performance, advertising, video editing/radio production and television production.

The Quill Awards Ceremony annually honors an exceptional media professional as well as a graduate of the program who has achieved success in the field. This year’s Quill Award for Professional Achievement was presented to Joe Torres, Emmy Award-winning anchor, reporter and show host for WABC-TV, and the Outstanding Alumna Award was given to Shannon Freeman ’14, a television director at CBS News.

Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor and Program Head of Media Studies, has coordinated the awards ceremony since 2005. He pointed out that the Quill Award singles out truly exceptional student efforts. “Not every student who earns an A gets a Quill,” he explained. “Recipients really have to show some hustle.”

Torres is an award-winning journalist who also hosts “Tiempo,” a weekly program to address issues of importance to the Hispanic community. He has won a Peabody Award and the Edward R. Murrow Award for his reports on the world-changing events of September 11, 2001. A native New Yorker, Torres graduated from SUNY Brockport with a B.S. in Communications and began his television career as an NBC page.

Freeman, the 2019 recipient of the Outstanding Alumna Award, landed a position at CBS News just months after graduating from Mercy with her B.S. in Media Studies with a concentration in Film and Culture. Now, Freeman plays a pivotal role in live streaming news, operating cameras and tracking technical aspects of video and graphics. While still a Mercy student, Freeman worked at News 12 Networks, first as an intern and then as a director of news, managing up to seven studio cameras during broadcasts.

Past Quill Award honorees include News 12 Westchester anchor and news producer Janine Rose; Emmy Award-winning anchor of Telemundo 47 News Jorge Ramos; NBC sportscaster Len Berman; and WCBS-TV co-anchor and author Mary Calvi.