Nine undergraduate students and four graduate students were recently chosen to receive scholarships from the Ohio Soybean Council Foundation. This is the eleventh year for the OSCF Scholarship Program, which was created to encourage undergraduate students to pursue degrees in one of the many academic fields that support the future of the soybean industry, including agriculture, business, communication, economics, education, science and technology, as well as to support ongoing graduate-level research. Since 2008, the OSCF scholarship program has awarded $310,000 in scholarship funds to students studying agriculture or a related field at Ohio colleges or universities. 

Undergraduate scholarships of $3,000 each were awarded to Wyatt Jones, Tanner Matthews, Kayle Mast, Abby Motter and Mikayla Storck.  A $1,500 scholarship was awarded to Monica Pennewitt, as she will be graduating in the winter of 2018.  The annual $3,000 FLM Harvest Scholarship, awarded to students in the field of agriculture communications or business, was awarded to Lea Kimley. The annual $5,000 Bhima Vijayendran Scholarship, named in honor of a Battelle research scientist who has made tremendous contributions to the soybean industry, was awarded to Matthew Klopfenstein. The Robinson W. Joslin scholarship was awarded to Rex Tietje. The annual $3,000 scholarship was created to honor a longtime leader in the soybean industry both in Ohio and nationally, who passed away in May of 2016.

Graduate scholarships of $5,000 were awarded to Will Hamman, Emma Matcham, Krystel Navarro, and Linda Weber.

“Congratulations to the 2018-2019 OSCF scholarship recipients,” says Bill Bateson, OSC board member, soybean farmer from Hancock County and scholarship selection committee member. “These students are bright, and have already contributed to the success of the soybean industry. We cannot wait to see what they do in the future.” 

 Undergraduate Winners:
• Wyatt Jones of Salem, Ohio, is a junior at OSU studying agriscience education.

• Lea Kimley of South Charleston, Ohio, is a junior at OSU studying agriculture communications. 

• Matthew Klopfenstein of Haviland, Ohio, is a junior at OSU studying agricultural engineering.

• Tanner Matthews of Ohio City, Ohio, is a sophomore at OSU studying agricultural systems management.

• Kayle Mast of London, Ohio, is a sophomore at Wilmington College studying agronomy.

• Abby Motter of Mansfield, Ohio, is a junior at the OSU studying agriscience education.

• Monica Pennewitt of Wilmington, Ohio, is a junior at OSU studying plant pathology.  

• Mikayla Storck of New Carlisle, Ohio, is a junior at OSU studying agribusiness and applied economics.

• Rex Tietje of Deshler, Ohio, is a junior at OSU studying agricultural systems management.

Graduate Winners:
• Will Hamman of Columbus, Ohio, is pursuing his Master of Science in horticulture and crop science at OSU. His research consists of two major segments. One focuses on seeding rates for different management zones and zone delineation. The second part focuses on how soybeans change their plant architecture, as well as how changing the seeding rates affect harvest loss and combine fuel use when soybeans are harvested.

• Emma Matcham of Columbus, Ohio, is pursuing her Master of Science in agronomy at OSU. Matcham is determining which components of field variability have an impact on ideal seeding rate. She is also looking at how to delineate homogenous zones based on those variables and how to set seeding rates for each zone.

• Krystel Navarro of Wooster, Ohio, is pursuing her doctorate in plant pathology at OSU. Her research uses an amplicon-based metagenomics approach to study oomycete populations in Ohio and to determine the effects of environment, agricultural practices, soybean cultivar, and soil physical properties in species diversity and abundance.

• Linda Weber of Wooster, Ohio, is pursuing her Master of Science in plant pathology at OSU. Her research is focused on the management of soybean diseases, mainly through studying the effectiveness of host resistance. Her research also involves several other disease issues, from preventing the spread of fungicide resistance to the screening of soybean cultivars for resistance to a certain set of pathogens.

Source: Ohio Soybean Council