Mentor resident earns scholarship

Sixty five students, including Steven Bengele from Lake County, have been awarded scholarships from the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program and Foundation. These scholarships are awarded to qualified students pursuing careers in the natural gas and oil industry.

Among this year’s scholarship recipients is Steven Bengele of Mentor.

Bengele attends Cleveland State University studying chemical engineering. This is his second time being awarded an OOGEEP scholarship.

To date, OOGEEP has awarded close to half a million dollars in scholarships to students from Ohio, or students pursuing higher education in Ohio, in order to help relieve some of the financial burden of attending the college, university, technical or trade school of their choice. This year, these winners represented 32 Ohio counties, 27 institutions of higher education and 17 different majors.

“Ohio’s natural gas and oil producers are committed to seeking out and assisting the next generation of leaders that will help innovate, explore, develop and produce our future energy resources,” said Karen Matusic, OOGEEP Scholarship Committee Chair, and Public and Government Affairs Manager at XTO Energy, an ExxonMobil subsidiary. “Our scholarship recipients represent some of our state’s best and brightest students. We are excited to be able to play a role in their educational journey.”

To be considered for a scholarship, students were required to submit an essay describing their personal career goals in the natural gas and oil industry, submit multiple letters of recommendation and meet other academic requirements.