Supplied
Lydia Rae, left, Lily Shortus and Jack Weir are the recipients of the last Aoraki Education Trust Board’s Adair Farm Scholarship.
A scholarship awarded to students training in the rural field has been given out for the last time.
The Aoraki Education Trust Board’s Adair Farm Scholarship had been in existence since 2002, and awarded to 48 recipients, initially from the income received when Aoraki Polytechnic’s Adair Farm, now Ara, closed in 1998.
The funding had now been exhausted, the trust said.
This year’s final successful applicants are Jack Weir, Lydia Rae and Lily Shortus.
The trust said members were “impressed with the calibre of applicants’’.
Weir, of Otipua, will study for a Certificate in Farming Systems at Telford – Southern Institute of Technology, based in Balclutha, next year. He aimed to eventually work in the Aoraki region’s High Country.
Rae, of Geraldine, was enrolled in a Diploma in Agriculture at Lincoln University, after which she hoped to study for a Diploma in Farm Management.
She intended to work in the agricultural services industry.
Shortus, originally of Waimate, was completing her first year’s studies for a Bachelor of Agriculture at Lincoln and the scholarship would assist her with accommodation and tuition costs for her second year.
She intended to work as a farm advisor in the agricultural services industry.
Most of the funds for the scholarship were gifted to the polytechnic’s training facility by South Canterbury farmers in the mid-1980s.
In later years, the trust decided to eat into the capital to enable awardees to have substantial scholarships to cover more of their costs.
