Before she reported on the stars of outer space professionally,\u00a0Jackie Wattles \u201914 (CLAS)\u00a0spent her UConn journalism days reporting on the stars of student government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were willing to stick around and debate late into the night, so I would rush to meet my deadlines by sprinting from the Student Union to the Daily Campus newspaper building,\u201d Wattles recalls. Fortunately, the cross-campus dash didn\u2019t take too many strides: Wattles is 6\u20192\u201d.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Wattles also played for the women\u2019s volleyball team as a middle blocker, the center position in the front row usually held by the tallest person on the roster. Growing up 1,800 miles from Storrs in the small Texas town of Liberty Hill, Wattles was recruited by several DI volleyball squads. \u201cI tell my dad I chose UConn to attend a school where the men\u2019s basketball team could beat his University of Arizona.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wattles, a journalism and political science double major, remembers one particular assignment. Professor Marcel Dufresne tasked his investigative journalism students to find as much information as they could about him (through legal means only). While almost everyone else stuck to the internet for research, Wattles \u2014 recognizing that many municipal records hadn\u2019t been digitized by then \u2014 drove to Dufresne\u2019s hometown town hall, where she dug up his voter records and property deeds on paper. \u201cFor some assignments,\u201d she admits, \u201cI will go fully mentally deranged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, Wattles covers the private space industry for CNN \u00ad\u2014 a beat she entered accidentally. Spending her first several years at CNN as a breaking news business reporter, she was often assigned nights and weekends, as early-career journalists often are. \u201cA lot of rockets launch on nights and weekends!\u201d she says. CNN eventually promoted her to their website\u2019s full-time space reporter.<\/p>\n