The scholarship committee is meeting Monday, July 10 to make the final decision on this year’s scholarship applications.

We had a team of eight people who helped score and through the process noted that two of the applicants would qualify for the Sisters Fund – the fund started by two sisters who want to help students who have experienced domestic violence. While the Sisters Fund is short the $1000 for the scholarship (yesterday at $350, today at $450) we had a couple of board members step up and say they’ll help fill it out if one of these applicants qualifies in the final round.

So, all our work lately has been around qualifying finalists (there were 63 out 127), scoring the 63 by the first team, narrowing them down to 25, and sending those 25 to the board members to score, while someone (me) tabulated everything in a mighty fine excel spreadsheet.

Things I found interesting – we have five in the finals from Peninsula College – one of the teachers up there wrote several letters of recommendation, five from community colleges across the state, and three who want to become a nurse – from there the common factor in all of them is that are either a single parent, raised by a single parent, or own their own with little or no support.

Thanks to the free public service announcement ads we received from The Columbian, we did see an increase in applicants from Clark College and WSU this year.

Some of the applications were beautifully written and a couple needed some spelling help – but we are thrilled to know these wonderful women are part of our state and are working to make it better for themselves and their families.

Stay tuned for the big announcement!