The Kiwanis Club of Carefree Benefit Foundation recently announced its 2020 scholarship award recipients. Scholarship and merit awards totaling $219,500 were awarded to 25 area high school seniors. While the issues presented by the COVID-19 pandemic preempted traditional meetings for most Kiwanis committees, the Foundation’s scholarship committee, chaired by Janet Busbee, was able to utilize state-of-the-art software designed by Kaleidoscope Group throughout the scholarship process.
Electronic applications enabled high school seniors to apply on-line. Committee members were able to have real-time access to the applications, which also facilitated the review process. The software redacted names from the applications and assigned a unique identifying number to each application. The streamlined application process resulted in the most significant number of applicants received since the program started in 1986.
Video conferencing allowed all committee members to meet and proceed with the application vetting process. Today’s technology made a significant impact on the Scholarship committee’s ability to move forward when everything was shutting down. Regretfully, a public scholarship ceremony was not possible for the class of 2020 due to restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following are the Kiwanis Carefree class of 2020 scholarship and merit award recipients:
Art & Humanities
Brittany Whalen
Abigail Nosan
Athletic Merit
Matthew MacDonald
Ryan Hildebrand
Foreign Language
Megan Matthews
Viviana Rieman
Billy Mullenmeister
Key Club
Lauren Jankowski
Math
Trenton Dianovich
Elizabet Cave
Science
Hailey Steenhoek
Georgina Karsonis
4-Year
Lauren Geiselhofer
Blake Dorame
Natalie Stahl
Jonah Rolfness
Alexandra Rolfness
Chloe Otstot
Alyssa Newington
Jessica Menton
Russell Liberman
Karli Koskovich
Savannah Gallop
Adam Busbee
Rockford 4-year Award
Jackob Eaton
