Every year during the Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative meeting, scholarships are given to high school students.

This year is no different, but the scholarship amount is: The cooperative is giving away a total of $7,000.

“Seven $1,000 scholarships will be given,” said Carline Mitchell, REC marketing specialist. “That’s more than we have given out in the past.”

Only children of cooperative members are eligible for the scholarships, she said.

“A scholarship committee, which had three directors and three cooperative employees, made the decisions,” she said.

The scholarships will be presented during the annual meeting 7 p.m. Friday at Seven Springs Mountain Resort.

The cooperative was able to provide more scholarship money this year because of Senate Bill 1263, which was signed into law last winter.

“It allows electric cooperatives to use their unclaimed capital credits for education or civic purposes,” Mitchell said. “Rather than giving it to the state, we are allowed to keep it and give it out in scholarships. We normally do the scholarship, but because of that we can give more to the scholarship fund.”

Before the bill was signed, any money that was not claimed within five years was sent to the state treasury.

“This allows us to put consumers first, which is our goal,” she said.

The REC business meeting will also include a guest speaker, door prizes, entertainment and the election of three directors in District 4, District 6 and District 8. There are nine districts in Somerset County.

In District 4, which includes Somerset and Brothersvalley townships, the nominees are Thomas W. Calvert and Jerry L. Engle.

Wayne E. Sechler and Harry W. Mosholder are nominated in District 6, which represents Black, Summit and Elk Lick townships.

The nominees in District 8 are Dennis J. Nicklow, Sue Koontz and James C. Brocht. District 8 includes Upper Turkeyfoot Township and Lower Turkeyfoot Township in Somerset County, and three townships in neighboring Fayette County.

Only members of the cooperative are allowed to vote for directors.

Dave Rowe, manager of member services and public relations for Randolph Electric Member Cooperative in North Carolina, will be the guest speaker. Rowe is a Penn State graduate and played in the National Football League for 13 years.

Entertainment will be provided by Berlin Brothersvalley Concert Choir.

Information from: www.dailyamerican.com/

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Friday, June 8, 2007 at 1:28 am and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: Education News, Scholarship, Student, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.