No one at the ceremony demonstrated the kind of fulfilment potential that Charlie Whitaker described more impressively than alumni speaker Natalie Alcide, a Trustee of GCSF and co-chair and organizer of the event. Introducing the awards portion of the program, she said the industry is as “magical” today as it was when she received her first GCSF scholarship award 13 years ago.
Today Alcide is a Senior Art Director for the TBWA\Chiat\Day agency and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in media and communication arts at City College of New York. She attributed some of her progress to the encouragement she has received from members of the industry through her connection to GCSF.
She said the industry’s veterans are willing to do the same for today’s students on the doorsteps of their careers. “Learn all that you can from these wonderful people,” Alcide urged them.
Like their predecessors, the GCSF scholarship recipients of 2024 are students from throughout the New York metropolitan area who are pursuing academic degrees in graphic communications. Recipients can apply for repeat grants as their studies progress. (A list of the 2024 recipients, their awards, and their schools appears here.)
Contributing to institutions as well as to individuals expands the ways in which GCSF can assist students and supporters of graphic communications. Accepting a grant for the third time was Women’s Press Collective, a Bronx-based organization that has been teaching people how to write, design, and print in support of grassroots advocacy campaigns in their communities since 1982. Lisa Daniell, operations manager, said that the group has recently trained 30 press operators who are then expected to train others in presswork.
