O’Brien County, Iowa — Each April the Sheldon Chamber and Development Corporation, in conjunction with O’Brien County Economic Development hold a Career Day for students in O’Brien County schools. The mission of O’Brien County Career Day is to provide opportunities for high school students to learn about the vast variety of professional careers within the county borders and to encourage those students to return to the area after graduation.
Something new was included in Career Day planning this year…the awarding of a $1,000 scholarship to a student who met all the scholarship criteria. Sheldon Development Director Curt Strouth tells us about those qualifications.
(As above) “Participating in career day is number one. Be a student at one of our four participating schools here in O’Brien County. Then ultimately go on and further their education or go right into the work force in O’Brien County, right after graduation of high school. So really the idea behind it is to figure out a way to keep these people here.”
He says they had originally planned to award the scholarship during the April Career Day, but thanks to COVID-19 that event didn’t happen.
(As above) “We’re excited about the first annual career day scholarships, as we continue to evolve that event. We received over ten pretty high quality applications. We were planning on awarding them on the stage of career day in conjunction with our homecoming scholarship award winners that we do here in Sheldon and this is the just a good way to showcase a local talent.”
Strouth said the original plan was to award one scholarship, but elected to award two.
(As above) “We’re excited about it, we will run it again next year. We were planning on just funding one scholarship this year, but because we had such an outstanding scholarship pool and some additional funding left over from the the actual event that did not happen, the committee decided let’s go ahead and fund two this year, they’re both very deserving applicants.”
He tells us who won this year’s O’Brien County Career Day scholarships.
(As above) “John Vander Veen and Emily Chicoine, both O’Brien County high school students in the region. Both were participants in Career Day in the past. So we’re excited about the applications that they demonstrated, and they were very high quality applications in a very competitive application pool for our first annual scholarships for 2020.”
Chicoine is a 2020 graduate of South O’Brien High School, and will attend Moningside College in Sioux City, with a double-major in Agronomy and Agribusiness.
VanderVeen is a 2020 graduate of Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn High School.
