Mark Oltmanns Wins Prestigious Overseas Press Club Scholarship

The 2011 OPC Foundation scholars: Left to right, Stewart, Rappleye, Pena, Camm, Oltsmann, Chakanetsa, Makan, Chen, Madhok, Murray, Besant, Kuruvilla, Bailey, and Tang

Mark Oltmanns (’12) was recently awarded an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholarship. He received the $2,000 award at the Foundation’s 2011 Annual Scholarship Luncheon held at the Yale Club in New York City. Charles Sennott, executive editor of GlobalPost, was the keynote speaker.

Oltmanns was among 14 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 175 applicants from 55 different colleges and universities. His winning essay “The Iron Ladies” depicted a group of housewives in southern Thailand who have armed themselves with rifles and handguns to protect their village from the violence unleashed by a Muslim separatist movement that has resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 people.

Oltmanns was awarded the Flora Lewis Scholarship, named for the legendary Paris bureau chief of the New York Times. He also won an OPC Foundation internship at the AP bureau in Bangkok.

The scholarship winners were also honored with a reception at Reuters the night before the luncheon and toured The Associated Press headquarters in New York City.

The OPC Foundation is the nation’s largest and most visible scholarship program encouraging aspiring journalists to pursue careers as foreign correspondents.

For more information on the OPC Foundation and its scholarship program, see www.overseaspressclubfoundation.org.