PlastiCert unveils Scholarship program
At the Lewiston Altura Senior Awards night this year, PlastiCert participated in the scholarship program for the first time.
Held each spring, the Senior Awards night recognizes all the seniors that are receiving their National Honor Society cords signifying their meeting NHS requirements scholastically, in service to community, leadership activities, and character actions and deeds. They also receive honors medals for achieving GPA requirements, (nearly 2/3rds of the senior class met the honors GPA requirement).
The final part of the program is local organizations and businesses awarding scholarships to seniors that have applied for them.
PlastiCert participated for the first time as a kickoff to our celebrating 20 yeas of doing business in the Lewiston community. Two scholarship opportunities were unveiled. The first was the PlastiCert Founder’s Engineering Scholarship. The second was the PlastiCert J&N Memorial Scholarship. The Founder’s scholarship was named in honor of PlastiCert’s founder, Howard Ysteboe. Howard was an engineer and a businessman that started PlastiCert after having helped create injection molding facilities for OEMs around the world. While quite common now, (I am one example), an engineer/businessperson was rarer in the 70’s & 80’s. We named the scholarship for him and awarded it to a Senior going on to earn an engineering degree. While we would prefer they go to attain a composites or plastics engineering degree, we’re happy to encourage anyone to join the ranks of us engineers. This year’s recipient has been coming to our facility for one class period each day this spring quarter and is going on to Iowa State University for Mechanical Engineering.
The other scholarship we introduced is a tribute to our coworkers, specifically two that succumbed to cancer in past years. The PlastiCert J&N memorial Scholarship will be awarded to a senior looking to go into the medical or social sciences. This inaugural recipient is looking to go into radiology. After having been treated for ACL tears in one knee and then the other, she was intrigued with the medical field and specifically radiology. She is looking to start her academics at Minnesota State University Mankato, and then finish within the Mayo Clinic’s University of Minnesota Radiology program.
PlastiCert looks forward to providing this scholarship opportunity to seniors in the coming years, hoping that they will eventually return to our area to augment an already stellar community scene here in Lewiston.