Educators Credit Union News Blog: Educators Awards 35 Scholarships to Local High School Seniors

Educators Credit Union celebrated success and excellence at its 2018 scholarship recipient dinners in Janesville and Milwaukee.

Educators awarded our 2018 scholarship to 35 graduating seniors that attend schools throughout our 11-county service area. This is the largest group of scholarship winners in the history of this program. Each student will receive $2,000 to help pay for college.

“My mom and I are both going to be paying for college, so this will help both of us,” said Ben Hufendick, a scholarship winner from St. Joseph Catholic Academy in Kenosha. “She was in the room with me when I got the letter and she was probably happier than I was.”

In order to be awarded a scholarship, the students had to demonstrate one or more of Educators’ core values, attend a high school in our service area, be eligible to graduate at the end of the 2017-18 school year, have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 by the end of the first semester, be accepted by an accredited college or technical school, and be the primary owner of an Educators Credit Union account.

“This is an amazing group of students,” said Educators’ Director of Community Engagement Victor Frasher. “Every year, we get hundreds of submissions from truly incredible people. It was hard for our Scholarship Committee to make a final selection, but we ended with 35 exceptional students who we believe are going on to do big things.”

These students certainly have big ambitions. At the ceremony, many announced their plans for the future. Some wanted to be biomedical engineers, and others wanted to be politicians. One student is going to school to become an astronaut, while another is going to Harvard in the hopes of becoming a neurologist.

“This past summer, I studied at the Harvard Center for Brain Science,” said Sophia Sun from Brookfield Central High School as she explained her future ambitions. “I’m looking forward to continuing my research in this lab.”

It wasn’t hard to tell that the students were ready to head off to college and start the next step in working toward their dreams.

“This is the first time I’ll ever go to school by myself,” said Nancy Suarez from Parker High School. “It’s a chance to get to know myself and to see what I can do on my own.”