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In a surprise presentation at the annual KSPA state celebration May 2, Lawrence High School adviser Barb Tholen was named the 2025 Engel Award winner. The award, sponsored by the Kansas Collegiate Media, is given each year to a Kansas high school journalism adviser who has demonstrated excellence in advising publications. 

In a press release from the KCM, president Amy DeVault shared why Tholen is so deserving of the award.

Tholen has been advising scholastic publications for 15 years, and she has built a culture of excellence in her programs. Her students enjoy consistent success in local, state and national honors for their work, including All-Kansas and All-American honors, Pacemaker Awards and Kansas Student Journalist of the Year recognition. While the list of awards impressed the KCM committee, they noted that Tholen shows a strong commitment to helping her students to cover important stories, even investigative stories, and finds opportunities to have their work published in professional publications.

Recently, her students covered the Lawrence Public School District’s use of Gaggle, an AI tool used to search through student documents and emails, flagging or deleting content with words or topics the district might find concerning. Tholen’s students realized that not only was the AI tool not terribly accurate in what it flagged, but also that it’s use was a violation of the First Amendment rights as student journalists, as it would be combing through their reporting notes and story drafts.

Former Lawrence High student journalist Natasha Torkzaban wrote that throughout their coverage, they faced opposition from school and district leaders.

“But our journalism adviser, Barbara (Barb) Tholen, stood behind us unwaveringly,” Torkzaban said. “She not only taught us to be unapologetically loud about our First Amendment rights, but she ensured we had the knowledge and confidence to defend them.”

Torkzaban, now a pre-law student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, wrote that Tholen’s mentorship was instrumental in her education, as it has been for hundreds of young people over the last decade.

“Barbara Tholen has not only fostered student leadership and free expression within her own staff but has profoundly shaped the field of scholastic journalism for any student lucky enough to learn from her,” she wrote. “She leads by example — continuously expanding her own knowledge in an ever-changing media landscape and sharing that wisdom with students at Lawrence High, at journalism conventions, and even at a rival high school across town.”

At least twice, Tholen stepped in to help the program at Lawrence Free State — once when the adviser there was undergoing cancer treatment and again when the program was without an adviser for half a semester. Laurie Folsom, former adviser at Lawrence Free State, wrote that in addition to being a fierce advocate for student journalism and a mentor to hundreds of student journalists, Tholen is a consummate mentor and friend to peer advisers. When Folsom was diagnosed with cancer, she said Tholen mobilized students, colleagues and friends to support her, her family and her students. Tholen oversaw the completion of the 2020 yearbook, and then supported the long-term substitute throughout the following school year, sharing lesson plans and helping the Free State publications with whatever they needed while their own adviser underwent treatment and recovery.

“Barbara Tholen has gone above and beyond as an educator as well as a human being,” Folsom wrote of her former district colleague. “Her students have a safe and supportive space no matter if they are the best journalism student or just trying to meet their basic needs. Lawrence Public Schools is a better district because of her selfless heart.”

Jared Shuff, the current publications adviser at Lawrence Free State, said that before he arrived, an adviser had left mid semester, and the program could easily have been in chaos. But Tholen stepped up to help, even while her plate was full with her own students and publications.

“Barb opened her doors to Free State student editors,” Shuff wrote. “These students would travel across town to work with her on the yearbook, newspaper or anything else they needed assistance with.

Nobody expected her to take on this extra responsibility, but that’s just who she is — if it’s in her power to help others, she doesn’t hesitate.”

Shuff said her help did not end when he arrived mid-year, as a brand new teacher just weeks out of college. Tholen mentored and helped him through that first semester.

“Truthfully, I don’t think I would’ve lasted as an educator for more than a semester without Barbara Tholen’s guidance, leadership and knowledge,” he said.

Kristy Nyp, journalism teacher at Manhattan High School, wrote that she remembers Tholen helping her with CTE pathway work years ago.

“Barb was one of the first teachers I met outside of the little 1A school where I began teaching, and almost certainly she was the first full-time journalism teacher,” Nyp wrote. “When I was seeking help for how to create a CTE pathway for my program in the period of transition from Vocational Education to Career and Technical Education, Barb was there on the front lines, helping to ensure that a pathway would be created despite pushback from KSDE powers.”

Tholen is leaving Lawrence High School at the end of the school year to step into the role of Executive Director of the Kansas Scholastic Press Association, where she will serve student journalists and scholastic publications advisers across the state.

In her nomination letter for this award, her former student Natasha Torkzaban wrote:

“Barbara Tholen is more than a journalism adviser — she is a relentless advocate for student voices, a defender of press freedom, and a mentor who changes lives. Truly, there is no one more deserving of the Jackie Engel Award than Barbara Tholen — journalism adviser, mentor, public school teacher, hero to 80 staff reporters, and relentless First Amendment advocate.”