Each year, the FEC scholarship program helps more and more East Chicago residents to achieve their educational goals. The program helps high school seniors as well as adults who are going back to school. This year, one high school student who is benefiting from the program is Hammond Academy of Science and Technology alum Jakob Rzepka.
Jakob’s receipt and use of the scholarship is helping to debunk the myth that a student must attend an East Chicago high school in order to be part of the FEC scholarship program. The requirements for FEC scholarships are a minimum 2.5 GPA, admission into an institution of higher learning and residency in East Chicago.
The 2015 scholarships were distributed to high school seniors in May 2015. Currently, Jakob and many of his fellow scholarship recipients are in their first semester of college putting those scholarship funds to good use.
“The scholarship has helped ensure that I will receive the education I need to achieve my goals without having a large amount of debt,” said Jakob.
Jakob is now a freshman at Purdue University Calumet working on a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He urges current high school students to take the time to sit down and fill out scholarship applications because, in the end, it will all be worth it.
“This scholarship will help me to become the first generation of my family to graduate from a four-year university and that means so much.”
To learn more about scholarship recipients like Jakob, visit foundationsec.org.
