"These scholarships are an effort to promote the community and the technical jobs that are out there, with hopes of building our workforce in the future and allowing these kids to have the opportunity to extend their education," Loup's Vice President of Corporate Services Todd Duren said.
Each year, Loup works with Central Community College (CCC) to award a series of scholarships to prospective CCC students.
"The theory behind that is ... that maybe they'll go to school and then come back and work in our communities," Duren said. "If they attend Central, we're hoping that maybe they'll work their way back here."
This year, 11 scholarships were awarded at a total of $6,000.
Lakeview High School Counselor Paige Rambour said many of the scholarships that come through her office are offered by local organizations.
"Cornerstone Bank always does one. The PEO Chapter CH, Sertoma, the Noon Lions Club," Rambour said.
Most local scholarships, Rambour said, are worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 or $1,000.
Some of the scholarships seek applicants going into specific fields. Duren said Loup often looks for people pursuing careers in technology and engineering.
"There's another (scholarship) that we run here at Loup, and it's called the Linkage Scholarship," Duren said.
Roughly a dozen local companies sponsor the Linkage Scholarships, many of them industrial.
" The Columbus Economic Council and Loup Power District and (those) companies support the leadership of Columbus High School in offering a quality program of engineering and technology principles to students," Duren said.
This year, four graduating CHS seniors received a Linkage Scholarship. In total, the Linkage Scholarships were worth $3,000. Duren said Loup has helped give 202 Linkage Scholarships since the creation of the award in 2004.
"It's really to promote engineering and technology secondary education with the hopes of building relationships to help our workforce in our local areas," Duren said.
But, Rambour said, most local scholarships have more general criteria than that.
"It definitely depends on the scholarship," Rambour said. "Some of the scholarships are geared more towards certain areas... And then, of course, we have several organizations that do a general scholarship for any of our graduating seniors."
Duren said the Linkage and Loup/CCC scholarships help pay for students' first year of postsecondary education.
Rambour said that's the case for most locally sponsored scholarships.
"I would say most of our local scholarships are just for the ... first year of college," Rambour said.
But, not all graduating seniors pursue higher education. Rambour said local businesses try to reach those kids with opportunities, too, though. The Providing Avenues Towards Hometown Experiences program is one example.
"It's a Chamber initiative that's really about a job shadowing opportunity for our students and getting them into all of our local businesses to kind of draw them back," Rambour said. "That's not necessarily scholarship-related but it gets students in those businesses."
©2021 the Columbus Telegram (Columbus, Neb.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
