Students Receive Scholarships from
Minnesota Association of Cooperatives Education Foundation
ST PAUL, Minn. (April 14, 2009) The Minnesota Association of Cooperatives (MAC) Education Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Cooperative Network, is pleased to announce that three students interested in pursuing careers in cooperatives have been awarded the 2009 Slettom Cooperative Leadership Scholarships. The awards ranged from $500 to $1,000 for students at the high school, undergraduate and graduate levels of academia. This is the fifth year that the scholarships have been awarded.
This year’s scholarship recipients are: Ryan Melhus, a high school student in Spring Grove; Kevin Graner of Rochester, a junior Food Science major in the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Minnesota St. Paul campus; and graduate student Lyndsay Rae Capeder of Little Canada, who attends law school at Hamline University.
The awards are based on scholastic achievement, leadership, and an ability to contribute to cooperatives in the future. Foundation directors voted to create the new scholarship to work toward its vision of educating others about the important role cooperatives play in their communities. The scholarships are named after long-time MAC Executive Director Ed Slettom, who is being inducted into the Co-op Hall of Fame in Washington D.C. next month.
Cooperative Network serves more than 600 member-cooperatives, owned by more than 6.3 million Wisconsin and Minnesota residents, by providing government relations, education, marketing, and technical services for a wide variety of cooperatives including farm supply, health, dairy marketing, consumer, financial, livestock marketing, telecommunications, electric, housing, insurance, worker-owned cooperatives, and more.
Ryan Mehus is the son of Bryan and Joni Mehus of Spring Grove, MN. He is a senior at Spring Grove High School where he is involved in Football, Basketball, Track, Choir, Band, Jazz Band, Men’s Group, Chamber Choir, National Honor Society, Youth Development, and Knowledge Bowl. He is a member of 4H and participates in many volunteer activities in the community. He plans to attend the University of Wisconsin at Platteville to study engineering.
Kevin is a Junior in the College of Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. Originally from Oronoco, MN, Kevin is from a family of six (father Kevin, mother Mari, and siblings Missy, Laura, and Tim). He graduated from Century High School in Rochester, MN in 2006. Upon graduating college in 2010, he plans on continuing his work within the cooperative system in Minnesota. Kevin has spent two years as in intern in the Agronomy division of Greenway Cooperative in SE Minnesota. For the summer of 2009, he is working for Croplan Genetics as the Nitrogen Insight Response Seed Intern. He is an energetic advocate of the cooperative system, and looks forward to becoming an active leader within it in years to come.
Lyndsay Capeder is a second year student at Hamline University School of Law where she is a member of the Hamline Law Review, Journal of Law and Religion, and the Client Counseling Competition team. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of St. Thomas with a B.A. in Journalism Mass Communication, Justice & Peace Studies, and a minor in Sociology. Currently, Lyndsay works as a law clerk for the Law Department at Land O’Lakes, Inc. in Arden Hills, Minnesota. Ms. Capeder is a native of St. Paul, Minnesota.
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