Taman Siswa

Many Teche Area students who graduate this spring are looking for scholarship money to attend college in August.

Southwest Louisiana Electric Membership Corporation, a state organization, is offering a scholarship program and will be accepting applications for 20 college scholarships, worth $2,000, to be awarded in a random drawing at the cooperative annual membership meeting June 7.

SLEMCO officials said scholarship money can be used to pursue any undergraduate degree from any public university in Louisiana.
“Scholarship applications can be found in every February, March and April SLEMCO bill,” Mary Laurent, communications manager with SLEMCO, said.

“Also, students can find scholarship applications on our Web site, which is www.slemco.com, or they can pickup an application from their high school guidance counselor.”

Laurent said anyone wishing to participate in the drawing in June must pre apply in order to do so.

“We have been doing this project since 1992 and we have had a number of students throughout the years that have attended Catholic High School in New Iberia,” Laurent said.

“Because SLEMCO is an electrical cooperative company we have unclaimed capital credit checks, money that we have to send to the state because it remained unclaimed by members, that helps fund this program.”

Josh Guilbeau, guidance counselor at Catholic High School, said this morning that the school participates in the SLEMCO scholarship program.

“We advertise this program to our students throughout the year,” Guilbeau said. “Any program that is willing to invest money in students’ education is a good program.”

Laurent said the deadline to apply for the drawing is May 8 and students must have at least 2.0 grade point average to enter the contest.

“The University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the Louisiana State University at Eunice will also have scholarship applications if needed,” she said.