Three Cal Poly students received awards this year from the Joseph Shinoda Memorial Scholarship Foundation Inc. which only gives awards to six students a year.
The winning environmental horticulture science students Jamie Mastright, Russ Newman and Heather Ephraim all plan to pursue careers in floriculture.
“I love the industry so much I’m open to any experience I can get,” said Mastright, a senior who received $5,000.
She is the first in her family to attend college, and is planning to graduate next June. Mastright has also worked on a few enterprise projects throughout her time at Cal Poly including the “Poinsettia Project.”
“She’s an exceptionally good student,” said horticulture and crop science professor Virginia Walter.
Walter is also a board trustee member for the Foundation and encouraged Mastright to apply.
Award candidates have strong grade point averages and an interest in floriculture, Walter said.
Extracurricular involvement in enterprise projects is also helpful, she said. The projects involve students planning a project, growing it, and marketing it. Many things sold at the plant shop are from these enterprise projects.
Newman, also a senior, worked on the “Easter Lily Project” last year and is planning to go into the floriculture industry upon graduation.
“I’m just interested in plants, and being able to know how to grow them,” he said.
Newman plans to work in ornamentals or a nursery. He would like to stay in the San Luis Obispo area.
When he heard about his $3,000 award he said, “It was great because my wife and I are paying out of our pocket. It’s really been a blessing.”
Newman plans to advance his career in a grower operation or nursery over the next several years.
Newman applied for the scholarship once before, but tried again this year with a “little more experience,”he said. More involvement was all he needed.
Heather Ephraim looks forward to more school after graduating in June. She is very interested in North Carolina State, as they have a floriculture program.
Ephraim was awarded the California Floral Council Scholarship, in the amount of $1,000. This is the first year the Foundation has presented it.
Since Ephraim pays her own tuition, the scholarship was “a $1,000 relief off my shoulders.”
Paying her way through scholarships and working as sales manager at the Poly Plant Shop, Ephraim is also involved in four clubs on campus. She is president of Pi Alpha Xi, the horticulture honor society fraternity and vice president of the Environmental Horticulture Club.
She is currently working on the “Dutch Bulb” project, which will involve the production of 1,600 pots.
Ephraim got involved in horticulture through Future Farmers of America (FFA), an agriculture organization, in high school.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said.
After receiving her associate’s degree in Southern California, she realized she needed to get back to a greenhouse and get involved with plants again. Ephraim then applied to Cal Poly and horticulture has been her passion ever since.
Ephraim plans to teach horticulture or floriculture at a university after finishing school.
“California students have an edge,” Walter said.
She said that California produces the largest number of floriculture products in the United States and that most of the scholarship contributors are from California.
“(Trustee board) members know where the money has come from,” Walter said.
Though this is the case, she said that probably less than 50 percent of award recipients over the past 40 years have been from California.
The Foundation is a nonprofit organization headquartered in San Luis Obispo and memorializes Joseph Shinoda, an industry leader who believed “that it was of utmost importance to the long-term growth and success of the flower business that it have an ongoing supply of well-educated young people to assume positions of leadership,” according to the Foundation’s Web site.
Since 1965, the Foundation has awarded more than $622,000 to 585 undergraduate floriculture students.
Scholarship applications are available in January and can be downloaded at www.shinodascholarship.org.