West Plains, MO. – The American Floral Endowment (AFE) provides academic scholarships in floriculture, helping to alleviate the financial burden of higher learning and proactively strengthening the agriculture industry. This year, they provided $67,600 in scholarships to 24 students from universities in the United States and Canada. The organization received 106 applications and they were scored by 60 industry member volunteers.
Students who received this scholarship were from across the U.S. including four from California, one from Washington, two from Minnesota, two from New York, one from Connecticut, one from Colorado, two from Florida, two from Illinois, one from Tennessee, one from Pennsylvania, two from Ohio, one from North Carolina, One from Missouri, one from Canada, one from Kansas, and one from Wisconsin.
The one individual from Missouri was local Rylee Brown who is attending the University of Arkansas for Agriculture. She received the National Greenhouse Manufacturers Association Scholarship of $600. Rylee is completing her undergraduate studies in agriculture, majoring in horticulture, landscape, and turf sciences. She has a special interest in tomato production, breeding, and preserving heirloom tomato varieties and other vegetables and flowers. She plans to continue her education in graduate school with a career goal of working in greenhouse production or seed industries.
“This scholarship is greatly appreciated by myself and my family,” Brown said. “As a junior at the University of Arkansas, I will be able to use this scholarship to help me finish out the last two years of my undergraduate education.”
