Yamaha announces Ag Comm Scholarship Program

Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A., is now accepting applications for its second annual scholarship program that provides financial assistance to members of the National Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT). ACT is a national college student association with 354 members located on 17 college and university campuses across the country. ACT’s mission of fostering professional development is at the core of the Yamaha-ACT Scholarship Program.

The Yamaha-ACT Scholarship Program is broken out into two individual student scholarships and one chapter scholarship. All three scholarships are aimed at helping students attend the annual Agricultural Media Summit (AMS), a professional development and networking opportunity.

For the 2008-09 program, the University of Florida received Yamaha’s chapter award, while Whitney Siegfried and Katherine Kuykendall, both ACT members from Purdue University, earned the individual scholarships.

“The Yamaha-ACT Scholarship Program is integrating messages of safe, responsible ATV and Side-by-Side vehicle use into the farming community by working with current and future communicators in the agriculture industry,” says Steve Nessl, Yamaha’s ATV/SxS marketing manager. “Yamaha again congratulates the inaugural recipients of this scholarship program, and we’ve been happy to receive some very positive feedback from the students. We encourage all ACT members to get involved and submit individual and chapter applications.”

“This scholarship competition is one of the most practical scholarship programs I’ve seen,” says Dr. Jefferson D. Miller, ACT faculty advisor and associate professor of agricultural communications at the University of Arkansas. “It requires students to create an actual example of journalistic or public relations work – something they can add to their professional portfolio.  Plus, the reward is that they get to go network at AMS with the people who will probably be hiring them in the near future.”

The AMS is the largest gathering of crop and livestock media professionals in the country and is the ACT’s primary career development networking opportunity each year.  The conference is hosted by the Agricultural Editors’ Association (AAEA) and the Livestock Publications Council (LPC) – potential future employers and colleagues of the students.

Applicants are judged based on merit, need and quality of submission materials by a review committee consisting of Yamaha representatives and members of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association and the Livestock Publications Council.  The 2009-2010 application process will run through the end of February and winners will be announced in early May 2010.  More information and guidelines, along with the application form, can be found online at http://www.nactnow.org/.

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