Flip Wilson scholarship winners announced
Archived article from Feb 9, 2004
By Sue Burghard Brooks
Two Rutgers seniors are the first recipients of the Flip Wilson Scholarship at Rutgers, created to increase diversity in the newsroom.
Janine Brown of Jersey City and Marguerite Estephan of Easton, Pa., both journalism and media studies majors, will share a $23,500 scholarship that will help defray the cost of tuition, fees, room and board, and textbooks.
Brown, who attends Douglass College, is a reporter for the student radio station WRSU-FM. She completed a journalism internship at The Jersey Journal and was a production assistant for WABC-TV in New York. Estephan, a Rutgers College dean’s list student, has worked in Rutgers’ Office of Undergraduate Admissions since 2001. A segment producer for “Inside Rutgers” on RU-TV, the student-run television network, Estephan interned at ABC News Productions in New York.
Rutgers was one of six universities selected last year to administer the Flip Wilson Scholarship program. Applicants, who must have a 3.0 grade point average and demonstrate financial need, are required to write an essay on Wilson’s impact on television or comedy.
One of 18 children, Clerow “Flip” Wilson was born in Jersey City in 1933 and spent much of his childhood in foster homes. An award-winning comedian, he created the Los Angeles-based Flip Wilson Scholarship fund through his estate. He died of liver cancer in 1998 at age 54.
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