You Can Fly: First 2018 scholarship winner announced

AOPA presented its first 2018 flight training scholarship to Madelief Schelvis—who is already in the cross-country phase of her training for a private pilot certificate—during the 2018 International Women in Aviation Conference in Reno, Nevada.

Through the generosity of donors to the AOPA Foundation, AOPA’s You Can Fly initiative will award more than 40 flight training scholarships during 2018. Applications to this year’s AOPA Foundation Flight Training Scholarship Program and AOPA High School Flight Training Scholarships are accepted until noon Eastern Daylight Time on May 2.

Kathleen Vasconcelos, senior director of development communications for the AOPA Foundation, and Paula Wivell, AOPA’s coordinator of flight operations and dispatch, presented the $3,000 award to Schelvis during a Women in Aviation chapter social sponsored by AOPA. Women in Aviation, International—which presents the annual International Women in Aviation Conference—currently has 117 chapters worldwide, including chapters in 17 countries and at 52 colleges and universities, said Molly Martin, WAI outreach director. AOPA hosts a WAI chapter that comprises 50 women and men from around the Frederick, Maryland, area; many of them are AOPA employees.

Schelvis took private pilot ground school while she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a double major in integrative biology and marine sciences. Schelvis is a certified open-water diver.

Web: https://youcanfly.aopa.org/scholarships