The board of the National Cartoonists Society Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship: Samantha Huyck and Abby McColgan. Two recipients were chosen this year as the scholarship was not awarded in 2024.
Samantha is an Illustration major at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI, where she has been working on character and environment design/illustration as an aspiring visual development artist. She enjoys experimenting with the design and shape language a character can have, and how their colors and shapes can convey personality and tell a story. Her ambition is to do visual development for studios like Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network and others.
Abby is a Sequential Art major at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Ga. She loves using the medium of comics to share her experiences and tell stories about her life, both comical and introspective. Her non-autobiographical comics range from lighthearted, down to earth stories that can be enjoyed by readers of all ages to more mature themes. Her dream is to publish her own graphic novels for middle grade and young-adult audiences.
Samantha and Abby were chosen from a multitude of applicants for the $5,000 scholarship award.
The Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship is an annual award established in memory of Jay Kennedy, the late King Features comics editor, from an initial grant from the Hearst Foundation/King Features Syndicate and additional generous donations from other prominent cartoonists. It is administered by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation. The applicants submitted eight examples of their work along with an entry form that included short essays on their current and future plans in cartooning. Entries were judged by a jury of professional cartoonists who are members of the National Cartoonists Society Foundation. The scholarship is awarded to a college student in the United States, Canada or Mexico who will be in their Junior or Senior year of college during the following academic year.
