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Yamaha Announces
Second Annual Ag-Comm Scholarship Winners
Cypress, CA (5/18/2010)
- Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A., has named the
recipients of its second annual Yamaha-ACT Scholarship
Program. The
University of Florida Chapter of the National Agricultural
Communicators of
Tomorrow (ACT) has received its second straight
chapter award, while Kelsey
Fletcher of Texas Tech University and Hailey Harroun
of Oklahoma State
University both earned individual scholarships.
As recipients of the individual scholarships, both
Fletcher and Harroun will also have the opportunity
to serve as interns for Yamaha during the 2010 Ag
Media Summit.
Yamaha's scholarship program was launched in
2009 to provide financial
assistance to members of the ACT, a national college
student association with 354 registered members
located on 17 college and university campuses
across the country. ACT's mission of fostering
professional development is at the core of the
new Yamaha-ACT Scholarship Program.
The Yamaha-ACT Scholarship Program is broken
out into two individual student scholarships and
one chapter scholarship. All three awards are
aimed at helping students attend the annual Agricultural
Media Summit (AMS). As the largest gathering of
crop and livestock media professionals in the
country hosted by the Agricultural Editors' Association
(AAEA) and the Livestock Publications Council
(LPC), the AMS is the ACT's primary career development
networking opportunity for these students each
year.
As part of the application process, students
were asked to incorporate
important ATV and Side-by-Side (SxS) vehicle safety
messages within an appropriate real life farming/agricultural
scenario into practical communications pieces
such as a feature story, brochure or press release.
This part of the application was meant to demonstrate
the students' quality of work, and also to seed
safety messages that they can carry throughout
their careers as professional communicators.
"Yamaha congratulates each of the recipients
of our Second Annual Yamaha-ACT Scholarship program,
and we are proud to assist them in their pursuit
of a career in agricultural communications,"
said Steve Nessl, Yamaha's ATV and SxS group marketing
manager. "We hope our application process
allowed these ACT students to educate themselves
on safe, responsible off-road vehicle use and
how they can continue to communicate these messages
in their future professions."
"Yamaha's scholarship program provides funding
for agricultural communications student members
of ACT, enabling the students to experience professional
career development opportunities that may have
previously been out of reach financially,"
said Jeff Miller, professor of agricultural communications
at the University of Arkansas and national adviser
of ACT. "The program also offers a unique
way for students to exercise and display their
skills and for Yamaha to communicate its key messages
related to safety to the next generation of agricultural
journalists and
communicators."
Applicants were judged based on merit, need and
quality of submission materials by a review committee
consisting of Yamaha employees; AAEA President
and Director of Communications at Iowa Soybean
Association, Karen Simon; Livestock Publications
Council President and Senior Director at The American
Quarter Horse Journal, Jim Bret Campbell; and
Christy Couch Lee, owner of Cee Lee Communications.
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