By Geoff Smith (@GeoffSmithLNN on Twitter)

Exhibition Park, Rotary East team up for new ag scholarship

Sep 11, 2018 | 10:32 AM

LETHBRIDGE – A top market researcher from Calgary will headline the presentation of a new $10,000 agricultural scholarship next February.

Exhibition Park and the Rotary Club of Lethbridge East announced the scholarship Tuesday, Sept. 11. It will be given to a Lethbridge-area student with at least three years of completed college or university study in an agriculture-related field.

Criteria include high academic achievement and leadership qualities. A committee will review written submissions and references, and formally interview finalists before choosing.

Andrew Bronson of the Rotary Club of Lethbridge East explains that each of the five clubs in Lethbridge has its own culture, and theirs is particularly agricultural in nature.

“Our club’s been chartered for 58 years and some of the founding members were farmers and ranchers in the community,” he explained. “The current membership is probably two-thirds ag-related careers and/or farmers and ranchers. We feel like it’s sort of our mandate, we’ve taken on, to advocate for agriculture. I think there’s no better way to express that than an agriculture scholarship.”

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“Our relationship with Rotary East has gone back to sending young people into Saskatchewan in the fall to a farm show there, and we’ve gone back years and years,” Doug Kryzanowski of Exhibition Park said, noting Rotary meetings have been held there for decades.

The scholarship will be presented at a dinner at Heritage Hall Thursday, Feb. 28. The guest speaker, Steve Koeckhoven, is market research manager at Nutrien (the newly-merged Agrium and PotashCorp), based in Calgary, with expertise in strategy and business development, sales and marketing of phosphate and ammonium sulfate, and direct experience of ammonium sulfate use in his family’s farm.

“He’s just a living example of advanced agricultural education,” Bronson said.

The application will go online Oct. 1. and the deadline to apply for the scholarship is Jan. 15. Applicants must be legal residents of either the City of Lethbridge, the counties/M.D.s of Lethbridge, Taber, Warner, Forty Mile, Cardston, Pincher Creek, Ranchlands, Willow Creek, or Vulcan, the Blood or Piikani First Nations, or the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass.