Scholarship Restructuring

As part of a restructuring effort to increase program impact and help ensure that its scholarships are awarded to students who need them most, the Foundation implemented major enhancements to its Scholarship program in 2022.

Enhancements include:

• Transitioning from one-time awards to renewable multi-year awards. Renewable awards will help build long-term student engagement and relationships.

• Increasing dollar amounts of scholarship awards. Increasing dollars will increase the awards’ impact.

• Introducing needs-based criteria. Presenting awards to the students who need them most will make the awards more meaningful.

In addition to assisting with long-term student engagement and increasing impact, these changes will help track student outcomes and performance, and help cultivate the next generation of SME leaders.

Distributed

$738,130 TOTAL SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS IN 2022

SME Family Scholarship

Made possible by the E. Wayne Kay Scholarship Fund, this highly competitive annual scholarship is awarded to students who demonstrate academic excellence and an interest in manufacturing engineering or related technology. The fund’s endowers, E. Wayne Kay and his wife, Beulah, established a successful chrome-plating company in Detroit in the 1940s after attending Iowa State University. In 1945, E. Wayne Kay served as chair of SME Detroit Chapter 1. He was also instrumental in establishing Macomb Chapter 142 before passing away in 1977. In 1991, when Beulah Kay died, she left instructions in her trust that a scholarship fund be established in memory of her husband.

In 2022, SME Education Foundation Family Scholarships were awarded to three students who have a parent or grandparent who is a member of SME.