Associate Professor Mark J. Prendergast has won a national Sigma
Delta Chi Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists
for columns he wrote in 2010 as Ombudsman of the newspaper Stars
and Stripes.
Professor Prendergast has been a member of the full-time faculty
since Fall 2007, but his ties to St. John’s go back decades.
The veteran journalist first came to St. John’s as a student in
1967. Although he left in 1969 to enter the Army, his mother
continued to work on campus. In 2002, he came full circle when he
began teaching
Journalism as an Adjunct in the College of Professional
Studies.
“My connection to St. John’s is strong,” he said.
In 2007, after a year-long visiting professorship at Ohio
University, Professor Prendergast returned to St. John’s, this time
in a tenure-track slot.
“Almost 40 years to the day that I started as a student, I came
back as a full-time Professor,” he noted with satisfaction.
In 2009, Professor Prendergast took on the additional duties of a
three-year appointment as Ombudsman of Stars and Stripes, which reports
on and for the U.S. military community abroad. Unlike other major
news organizations, Stars and Stripes is owned by the government,
but it is promised the same First Amendment protections as its
counterparts.
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