Despite the rather gloomy news with the stock market, we have some good news
regarding the Lucy and Charles W.E. Clarke Scholarship for high school students, which is a combined scholarship with the ASME Auxiliary and the ASME Foundation.

Our treasurer, Lynn Gerber, received the final payment from the Lucy Clarke estate, increasing our total restricted funds in that account from $325,000 to $613,915. We also received a temporarily restricted amount of $78,672. This restriction means that it can go only to high school students and cannot be used for anything else.

Due to this change in the amount in the Clarke Scholarship fund, we were able to participate in the granting of the Clarke Scholarship, along with the ASME Foundation, for the third year. An amount of $36,000 is being awarded from the Clarke Scholarship Fund this year, half from the ASME Auxiliary and half from the ASME Foundation. The Auxiliary foresees being able to continue contributing at the $18,000 level for a few years, even if the stock market takes longer than anticipated to recover.

The mechanical engineering departments of the following colleges received $6,000 each to give to incoming freshman this coming fall: New Jersey Institute of Technology, North Carolina State University, St. Martin's College, University of Alabama, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Virginia Tech.

Every year, the list of schools awarded scholarship money to distribute to their students changes. We would like to encourage all mechanical engineering departments that have an ASME Student Section to apply for these scholarships, as the number of applications for this scholarship money seems to have decreased every year.

For more information about how to apply, department heads can contact David Soukup, executive director of the ASME Foundation, at (212) 591-7397 or by e-mail at soukupd@asme.org.

— Ella Baldwin-Viereck
Auxiliary publicity chair

back to columns