Scholarships​

Zonta is pleased to announce Abigail Warrick as the fourth recipient of the Laura Lee Blenz Engineering Scholarship.   

Abby graduated from Marshfield High School in 2022, then completed two years at Southwestern Oregon Community College.  She is pursuing her undergraduate degree at Lewis and Clark College in 2024 with intentions to attend OSU for her master’s degree in engineering. 

Abby played volleyball at both Marshfield and SWOCC and has been an active volunteer with both the Egyptian Theatre and Pelican Harbor Food Bank. She was an impressive 4.0 student in both high school and college. Her goal is to work at NASA to design technology to improve space research and exploration. 

The Laura Lee Blenz /Coos Bay Area Zonta Engineering Scholarship is funded by a generous family donation. In the 1930’s when Laura Lee was in high school, she would have liked to have become an engineer. That opportunity was not available to her due to her gender. The award has grown to $4,000 a year and is automatically renewable for up to four years if the student is in good standing. 

 Additional recipients include:

Payton Davidson 

Geneva Varga 

Alhana McNutt

The Laura Lee Blenz scholarship is administered through the Oregon Community Foundation and pursuant to their rules, the selection committee can only have Zontians as a minority – since the outset, the selection committee has consisted of two Zontians Paula Bechtold and Anne Medhus Westbrooks and three local women engineers – Jan Kerbo, Barbara Negherbon and Shannon Souza.