Thanks to You, AIHF Scholarships Are a Success

By David Downs, CIH, CSP, QEP, CPEA

It's scholarship season for AIHF and there is a lot of activity this year. We received 50 applications for the $115,000 we plan to award in scholarships this year--new records for both the number of applications and amount to be awarded. The increase in applications is encouraging and is a continuing trend over the last few years.

The record amount of money available for scholarship support will be used to increase the amounts of individual named scholarships as well as provide for additional AIHF general scholarships to be awarded. Past scholarship winners emphasize how much the awards helped them continue and complete their studies, so we are happy we can increase both the amounts and numbers of scholarships.
 
Many thanks to the efforts of our Scholarship Committee, which is in the process of reviewing the applications packages (more than three-inches thick this year). Preliminary comments from members of the committee indicate that its job of choosing which applications to honor with awards will be made more difficult by the high quality of all the applicants. This is not unusual, and highlights the need for increasing our endowment funds so we can support more of these highly qualified, future industrial hygienists.

The awardees will be announced in June, at AIHce in Minneapolis. I can tell you that handing out these scholarships is the best part of being involved with the foundation. The smiles of excitement and the thanks on the faces of the scholarship awardees is payment for effort! Thanks for your support of the foundation endowment that allows us to make these awards.

David E. Downs, CIH, CSP, QEP, CPEA is president of the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation and can be reached at dedowns@ehsmp.com.