It's graduation season, which means that we're saying thanks and good luck to some of the college students who have been writing for our Local Current blog. As a salute to these talented young writers, we wanted to tell you a little more about this relatively new program at the Current.

For the past several months we've been giving college students across the state a chance to hone their music journalism chops and to help keep you informed about the music you love. Since November, 17 students hailing from ten different Minnesota colleges and universities have contributed to our Local Current blog; see all their contributions here. Thanks to support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, we're able to compensate these contributors with stipends for their hard work.

These students' contributions have ranged from artist profiles to concert reviews to event previews. They've given us a new perspective on local music, covering campus music news and helping us to report about music scenes from Winona to Duluth to Fargo-Moorhead. An "on call" program we started this spring gives students experience in being ready to quickly write about breaking news. KT Lindemann, who just graduated from the University of Minnesota at Morris and is moving to the Twin Cities to pursue a career in music journalism, has been writing our weekly Minnesota record release roundups.

Last month, we invited a dozen of our college contributors to the Current's St. Paul HQ to meet our staff and receive a day of training in music journalism. The day included nuts-and-bolts training with music reporter Andrea Swensson and me; a tour of the Current's studios and a visit with Barb Abney; a panel discussion with the Current's programming team; and a keynote address by Chicago-based music journalist Jim DeRogatis. At the end of the day, several of us went to the 7th Street Entry to see a show by Dan Croll; the students later wrote a group review of the set.

As we send our graduating college contributors off, we're looking forward to continuing to work with the rest of our writers—and we're always looking for new contributors. If you're an undergraduate student enrolled at a Minnesota college or university and you're interested in being considered for our college contributors program, please drop a line!