UR student named winner of Agnes Cooke Scholarship
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Ava Jenks, a journalism and English major at the University of Richmond, recently was named the 2025 winner of the Virginia Press Women Foundation's Agnes Cooke Scholarship.
As a sophomore, Jenks served as the news editor for the university’s newspaper, The Collegian, and also assisted in research with the University of Richmond’s journalism department. She is currently a summer intern with the Henrico Citizen.
The Agnes Cooke Memorial Scholarship honors a charter member of what was then called Virginia Press Women, which was founded in 1958. Agnes Cooke was well known in the Northern Neck of Virginia for the columns she wrote and edited for 35 years chronicling the everyday events in her community for the Northern Neck News and the Northumberland Echo. Shortly after Cooke's death in 1991, VPW (now Virginia Professional Communicators) created the Virginia Press Women Foundation, which administers the scholarships in her honor.
In addition to $3,000 to assist with education expenses, Jenks won a student membership in Virginia Professional Communicators, and has been invited to attend VPC’s fall conference.
In her scholarship application, Jenks noted that she hopes to find a career in international journalism. "This semester I took an international reporting class," she wrote, "where I had the opportunity to submit a proposal for the Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship and report on an immigrant-owned business in Richmond. With both of these opportunities, I fell in love with researching, reporting and learning about different cultures around the world.”
Due to the caliber of applicants this year, the Virginia Press Women Foundation board of directors also named two honorable mentions. Ashley Falat, a communications major at Virginia Tech, and Andrea Padilla Palavecino, a journalism and political science major at the University of Richmond, received student memberships in VPC and endowed attendance to the fall VPC conference.
For details about the Virginia Press Women Foundation, visit vpwfoundation.org.
