Clawson scholarships to Taylor, Callahan

April 23, 2020

By NCTA News

CURTIS, Neb. _ Sylvia Clawson Scholarships were awarded last fall to Scott Taylor of Curtis and Chase Callahan of Farnam for their final year of studies at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture.

The pair each received $2,500 in the ninth annual award to students from the Frontier County, Nebraska region.

Scott Taylor has been active with the NCTA Shotgun Sports Team and currently is a student worker at the campus farm. He plans to transfer this fall to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and major in industrial technology and go into teaching.

He graduated from Medicine Valley High School in 2017. He is the son of Alan and Natani Taylor, who are both educators in Curtis. Mrs. Taylor teaches at MVHS and Alan is the coach of the NCTA Shotgun Sports Team and is an NCTA adjunct instructor of beef nutrition.

While in high school, Scott was active in sports including wrestling where, in his senior year, he placed fourth in the 182-pound weight division at the Nebraska State Wrestling Championships.

Chase Callahan, a native of Farnam and graduate of Gothenburg High School, is completing his second year in agronomy and graduates on May 7. His career goal is to operate his own crop consulting business.

Chase has been active on the NCTA Crops Judging Team and was an officer in Collegiate Farm Bureau, where he served as vice president.

He is the son of Shane Callahan, an employee of Kinnan Ag in Cozad, and Connie (Darin) Norby who has been a private route mail carrier in the rural Farnam and Eustis region.

Family heritage honored

The Sylvia Clawson English scholarship honors the 1947 alumna of the Nebraska School of Agriculture high school, along with the agricultural roots of her parents Ira and Vinnie Clawson, grandparents Jake and Ida May Clawson, and maternal grandparents Fred and Edna Hecht, who all farmed in the region.

Fred Hecht was a strong voice for a proposed agricultural school in Curtis. He was active in fundraising and community support for the school which was established by the Nebraska Legislature in 1911. It opened in 1913 as a regional high school and became a college in 1965.

 “Sylvia had a desire to see that his contributions to the establishment of the school be recognized in the Frontier County community,” said Ted English, Sylvia’s husband.

The Sylvia Clawson English memorial for the Fred and Edna Hecht Scholarship fund was established through the University of Nebraska Foundation. It is available to qualified students from Frontier County. See https://ncta.unl.edu/scholarships-0 for details.