Broadcast journalist Kathryn Sotnik loves meeting fresh faces.

Speaking at Northeastern’s annual senior reception for communication studies majors at the Raytheon Amphitheater earlier this month, Sotnik, BA’03, noted, “Getting to deal with new people every day keeps me going.”

Sotnik, who anchors news coverage on television station WPRI in Providence, Rhode Island, challenged students to apply what they have learned in class and on co-op to their careers. “Be able to adapt,” she said. “Take all the skills you learned from your professors and use them.”

She certainly did. “I loved every minute of my experience at Northeastern,” Sotnik said, “whether it was going to classes or exploring Boston.”

As part of the event, junior Joel Marsh, a dual major in communication studies and cinema studies, was awarded the Curtis Haigh Memorial Scholarship.

The scholarship, he said, would go toward funding a film dedicated to Haigh, a handicapped Northeastern student who died in 1985.

Student speaker Maxine Roca praised her courses for their intellectual rigor, noting that President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death “would be dissected in my classes like no other class could.”

Her courses, she said, gave her a strong understanding of the world around her.

“We have had the opportunity to work with brilliant, motivated, truly dedicated professors,” she said.  “Before studying at Northeastern I was just a spectator.  Now, I’m a participant.”