2015-2016 Scholarship Subcommittee Annual Report

This year the Scholarship Committee had a total of three (3) meetings (October 29, 2015, March 24, and April 8, 2016). During our first meeting, the committee reviewed and revised the previous year's application, set dates for future meetings and designated committee member PR duties. Our second meeting is when the committee reviewed and discussed applicants to interview. This year we created our first web based scholarship application. Applicants had the ability to submit their application online. We also created a gmail account where the applications were sent, and documents were stored and viewed using Google Docs. This made the process easier for the committee members as well as the applicants. At the second meeting we selected 10 applicants to interview from the pool of 21 (3 applicants had incomplete packets). The third meeting, an all-day meeting, consisted of interviews and selecting the scholarship winners. From the 10 who were interviewed, six were chosen to receive scholarships. Later we learned that Sharon Karmazin donated $4,400 in addition to the $7,600 NJLA contribution, which gave each of the six recipients a total of $2,000. 

At the NJLA Conference, we held a program called "How to Be a Winner, Winning Strategies from Scholarship Recipients".The program featured a panel of four previous scholarship recipients (Lindita Cani, John Daquino, Timur Davis and Lisa Sedita); giving tips on what they did to win a scholarship, advice for anyone interested in applying for a scholarship, information for anyone asked to write a recommendation, as well as information on the application process and becoming a member of the committee. The panelists also discussed their current jobs and how the scholarship helped them. Unfortunately, the program had very low attendance, but the panelists were great, enthusiastic and informative.