By Chris Nugent
November is typically a busy month for the Scholarship Committee as we focus on evaluating this year’s scholarship applications. As I mentioned last month, we received forty-three applications for the 2022 application cycle, so this past month was no different. The review process is made that much more difficult based on upward trend in the overall quality of the applications we have seen over the past few years. We expect to complete our work prior to the Christmas holiday and will provide you an interim update on the AZ Pilots Facebook page prior to the New Year.
Because the APA is an all-volunteer organization, a key point of evaluation in our review is the applicant’s commitment to community service. Volunteer work within the Arizona aviation community is a plus and includes activities such as volunteering at EAA Young Eagle events, aviation summer camps and fly-ins. We also have students volunteer at APA specific events such as helping Grapevine airstrip maintenance work.
We were fortunate to have a group of students from the East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT) help with repainting the runway markings in October. We made a lot of progress repainting the runway numbers and doing some clean up on the aprons. We still have a lot of work to do to finish repainting the runway markings and look forward to having them back out after the New Year.
We also had some big news last month with the Operation Freedom Bird donation to our program to support scholarships for veterans and students seeking military aviation careers. We receive applications in this category each year and we’re very honored to continue OFB’s mission to support current and future veterans.
However, APA still needs your support in funding scholarships for those students’ seeking careers in commercial and business aviation. 
If you are considering donating, remember that they are tax-deductible and there is no administrative overhead, each dollar you donate goes directly to the students. And as they say, no donation is too large or too small, they all help us fulfill this important part of APA’s mission - https://azpilots.org/more-resources/charitable-donations.
Thank you again for your continued support of the program and Happy Holidays!
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