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Indiana Student Awarded $80,000 Scholarship by SME Education Foundation

22 May 2000

Indiana Student Awarded $80,000 Scholarship by SME Education Foundation

    DEARBORN, Mich., May 22 The Society of Manufacturing
Engineers (SME) and SME's Education Foundation granted the top Family
Scholarship award of $80,000 ($20,000 for up to four years) to Abigail Grace
Mitchell of Middlebury, Ind.  Mitchell has been home-schooled since
kindergarten.
    Mitchell is currently working with her father as a CNC programmer and a
job planner in the family's machine shop, Precision Tool.  "The primary
characteristic of my father, the one that has inspired me to become an
engineer, is his eagerness to teach," says Mitchell.  She earned a perfect SAT
score of 1600, was a semifinalist in the National Merit Scholar competition
and plans to pursue her education in mechanical engineering at Cedarville
College in Ohio.  Her hobbies are archery, flute, programming calculators and
working out proofs for mathematical theorems.
    "In support of a strong manufacturing base for the future, SME is working
to better prepare tomorrow's practitioners to meet the accelerated technical
and business needs of the 21st century," says Randy Maiers, director of SME's
Education Foundation.  "Through our scholarship programs, SME is encouraging
some of the best and brightest students to choose a career in manufacturing."
    SME also awarded a total of $15,000 in scholarships to three Wisconsin
students.  High school seniors Thomas S. Jonjak and Michael W. Rothaupt each
received $5,000 from SME's Family Scholarship.  College student David Ralph
Lothe received $5,000 as the first recipient of SME's Directors' Scholarship.
    Applicants for the Family Scholarship must be a child or grandchild of an
SME member, a high school senior or undergraduate with up to 30 credit hours,
pursuing a degree in manufacturing engineering, have a GPA of at least 3.0,
have a minimum SAT score of 1000 or ACT score of 21 and reside in the United
States or Canada.
    The Directors' Scholarship supports undergraduate students enrolled in a
degree program in manufacturing in the United States or Canada.  Applicants
must also be full-time students, have completed a minimum of 30 college credit
hours, have a GPA of at least 3.5, and demonstrate leadership skills.
    SME, headquartered in Dearborn, Mich., is the world's leading professional
society serving the manufacturing industries.  Through its publications,
expositions, professional development resources and member programs, SME
influences more than 500,000 manufacturing executives, managers and engineers.
Founded in 1932, SME has some 60,000 members in 70 countries and supports a
network of hundreds of chapters worldwide.