A New Orleans native, Charley Steward, 21, said she didn’t get much out of her first journalism class. Shortly after she enrolled in the high school course, disaster hit – Hurricane Katrina flooded her house, forcing Steward, then 17, and eight others in her family out of the city and into Georgia.

“It was hard,” she said. “It was 15 of us in the house.”

 In January 2006, just four months later, Steward returned with her mother to finish her senior year in the city. “At first I regretted it because it was like a ghost town,” she said. “It was depressing here – everything was closed, nobody on the streets. But I’m glad I stuck it out. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.” She graduated in 2006.

Steward returned to journalism, enrolling at Dillard University as a mass communications major. During the fall of 2008, Steward began working at the school newspaper, the Courtbouillion. After one semester, she became managing editor. Next year, her senior year, she will serve as the paper’s editor in chief.

Her love of journalism began in the eighth grade, after she won an essay contest for a piece about friendship.

Recently, she produced her first front-page story writing about Hill Harper’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Empower Me Tour. She chronicled how Harper advised her classmates to take better care of their personal finances.

While at the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, Steward hopes to focus on page design and copy editing. She also hopes to learn about photography and Web design.

 ”I know it’s going to be a lot of work trying to meet those deadlines but I’m looking forward to it,” she said.  ”I just want to soak up as much as I can.”