In 2021, the AWESOME Excellence in Education Scholarship Program will add three new dimensions. The program, launched in 2013, has awarded experiential scholarships each year to five women enrolled in university supply chain programs.
In past years, AWESOME Scholarships provided support for recipients to attend the annual conference of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and the annual AWESOME Symposiums. The overall goal of the program is to encourage young women with strong leadership potential to choose supply chain as a career and to enrich their educational experiences while they are students.
Those program features and goal continue in 2021 with these major additions:
- AWESOME will award up to 20 scholarships, an increase from 5 as in the past.
- Each AWESOME Scholar will receive a $5,000 tuition scholarship.
- Each AWESOME Scholar will participate in AWESOME Scholar CONNECT! – a network of AWESOME Scholars from all eight years that the Scholarships have been awarded, as well as recipients of the AWESOME/MIT Advancing Women through Education (AWE) Fellowship. AWESOME Scholar CONNECT! was started in 2020 to create a cohort of AWESOME Scholars and connections among the 40 current and previous AWESOME Scholars and AWE Fellows.
According to Michelle Dilley, AWESOME CEO, “Because professional relationships are so important to a successful career, our hope is that these women who are peers now at the earliest stages of their supply chain leadership journeys, will stay connected as they grow and develop at leaders.”
A special feature of AWESOME Scholar CONNECT! is the AWESOME Scholar Forum, also developed in 2020. This multi-session series provides actionable, career and leadership development content and interaction with experienced supply chain leaders and other professionals. The educational and early-career experiences of AWESOME Scholars are described in AWESOME Scholar Spotlights that appear on the AWESOME website.
The 2021 AWESOME Scholars, the first group to number as many as 20, will be selected in the spring of 2021. A total of 35 schools are being invited to nominate up to two candidates each – women who demonstrate high supply chain leadership potential. Scholarship recipients will attend the CSCMP EDGE Conference (either in-person or virtually) in the fall of 2021 and then report on their experiences. In addition to AWESOME Scholar CONNECT! activities and the AWESOME Scholar Forum, they will be invited to participate in other AWESOME events.