Meet a Fluid Power Scholarship Winner & Tom Wanke Legacy Awardee – Riley Mack

The NFPA Education and Technology Foundation has awarded 20 $2,000 scholarships to students pursuing fluid power related fields of study.

One of the winners, Riley Mack, is attending Garden City Community College, and was selected for a Tom Wanke Legacy Fund Award. We asked Riley a few questions about winning the scholarship.

What does winning a Tom Wanke Legacy Fund Award mean to you?

Awards such as this are incredibly beneficial to students like me who are not following the traditional 4-year college plan. I have been working since I was 14 years old to help pay my own way. While I know my chosen career path will allow me to repay any student loans, this scholarship will definitely help ease the burden.

Why did you choose to learn about fluid power?

As a farm kid I started learning about tractors and hydraulics at an early age. During my junior year of high school, I learned about the John Deere TECH program opportunity. It was a natural step to go from working on our own equipment to choosing to pursue an education to work on equipment for others.

What are your career aspirations? What type of fluid power job do you hope to get after you graduate?

As technology advances, so does the farming equipment used across the nation. It takes specialized training to work on most pieces of equipment today. A new generation of service technicians trained to properly repair farming equipment is vital to the future of agriculture in our country. After completion of my Agricultural Equipment Technology program at Garden City Community College, I feel I can have a positive impact on our area farmers by providing them with the resources needed to keep their equipment operating in the field. In agricultural machinery hydraulics use fluid power to operate implements and perform various tasks. Fluid power will be present daily as I service and repair different types of equipment.

A minimum GPA of 2.5 out of 4.0, 500-word essay, and letter of recommendation were required from each applicant. The NFPA Foundation’s goal is to help graduating high school students, and individuals enrolled in community colleges, technical schools and universities pursue their academic interests in fluid power.

Through the Thomas Wanke Legacy Fund Awards, the NFPA Education and Technology Foundation aims to increase both the number of students studying fluid power, and also the quality of fluid power education in our nation’s universities – two goals clearly aligned with and ennobled by Tom’s life and legacy.

One way NFPA members can get involved with scholarship programs is to volunteer as a judge to serve on the application review committee. This year 27 judges from 19 NFPA member companies reviewed 122 eligible student applications to the Fluid Power Scholarship program. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Haley Nemeth at hnemeth@nfpa.com.