Eliana Jolanda Alzate | Student

Speak Now

“Why International Student Orientation is Essentially a Taylor Swift Concert.” Eliana Jolanda Alzate '26 wrote this piece for The DePauw the summer before her sophomore year. It was an idea that came to her upon waking from a dream after completing an internship and attending a Swift concert in Chicago, her first concert ever. It was just one of many assignments for the sophomore.

When it comes to finding inspiration for her writing, her DePauw advisors will tell you that Eliana has range. She has written on technology, the arts, politics, campus headlines and more. And she’s interviewed classmates, faculty, and administrators as a reporter for WGRE, the campus radio station. She writes with a sense of urgency and, when needed, a sense of humor. So much of her work is born of a need to be creative and to help others.

It’s that latter need that led Eliana to her favorite pursuits at DePauw - being a student journalist at the Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media and being active in the international student community at DePauw. “I want to give back at DePauw, to my classmates coming from Vietnam, Mexico, Mongolia, Uganda and other places around the world, and to my friends back home in the Philippines following in my footsteps in the high school journalism program.”

In the spring and summer of 2024, Eliana was selected for a prestigious Carnegie-Knight News 21 Fellowship through the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU. “This spring, my cohort will study the state of democracy in the US and around the world. Then I will dive deep into one particular aspect of that topic with a 10-week reporting fellowship during the summer.”

Country: Philippines
Major: Computer Science and English Writing
Minor: Media Studies
Involvement: Media Fellows, The DePauw, WGRE, International Student Association.
Fellowship: Carnegie-Knight News 21 Fellowship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism
Future plans: Graduate school in journalism and pursuit of a career in international journalism.