The 24th Annual Cape Coral Mayors Scholarship Fund recognized the best and brightest local scholars Wednesday night.
Each year a group of students are awarded a $1,500 scholarship to help with the costs of college, and this year was no different. The only stipulation for prospective scholarship recipients is that they reside in Cape Coral.
This year’s 11 scholarship recipients included Jaclyn Calicchio, Chelsea Spiro Jessica Mattfeld and Marie Dino of Bishop Verot High; Lindsay Cobb of Mariner High; Christian Cousin, Kristin Keezer, Daniell Montes, Kylee Shirakawa and Emily Vitale of Cape Coral High; and Adam Rosner of North Fort Myers High.
Scholarships winners have each been accepted into a university ranging from the University of Florida and Florida State University to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and American University.
Some of their aspirations are to be nurses, physician assistants, mechanical engineers and U.S. diplomats.
Student recipients were introduced and given their scholarship by a corporate sponsor and the Cypress Lake High School String Quartet performed during the banquet’s social hour.
Mayor John Sullivan addressed the students, their families and other officials from the Cape Coral City Council and Lee County School Board.
“The education of our youth is an important undertaking,” he said. “My sincerest congratulations to the recipients of the mayor’s scholarship.”
One profound difference from past years was the award venue. This year organizers changed the location from the Cape Coral Yacht Club to Tarpon Point Marina.
“It is a year of change for our board,” said scholarship fund President Karen Baker. “We lost several long standing members of our board, and we thought it would be a good year for change.”
The scholarship fund depends on sponsors and the challenging economic climate of the last two years has cut the number of recipients from 26 four years ago to 11 in 2010. This was also the year that scholarships were supposed to be increased to $2,000.
Baker said it was difficult for many sponsors to contribute as much as they had in the past, but many of the sponsors want to make sure more recipients are added in the future.
“I have a lot of positive feedback that older sponsors will be able to step up next year,” she said.