Two top students selected for major GIE Media scholarships

CLEVELAND – GIE Media, the nation’s leading publisher of horticulture and green industry trade magazines, has named the winners of its annual Young Leaders Scholarship.

Robin Cannon, a junior at Kent State University-Salem, and Judson LeCompte (pictured above), a graduate student at Auburn University, will both receive $5,000 to continue their education this fall.

Cannon, who currently works as a horticulture intern at the Shaker Heights, Ohio, Country Club, has spent several years pursuing her degree and working to support her family. She was the horticulturist for three years at the Boulder Creek Golf Course in Streetsboro, Ohio, which is ranked one of the best public courses in Ohio. She established and ran the greenhouses on site there, and currently manages a crew at Wheeler Landscaping.

“Many people have said to me over the course of the past two years that I should be content with the job that I have, and that I should quit school,” she wrote in her application essay. “I strongly disagree. I believe that you can never stop learning, and that there is always someone that can teach you something that you didn’t already know.”

LeCompte, a first year graduate student at Auburn University, brings a wide range of experience in the green industry to his work. He worked as the manager of a garden center, where he was responsible for 15 employees and $12 million a year in sales, and led several student groups as an undergraduate. His research has focused on the use of gray water and salt water in irrigation, sustainable landscape practices and the development of green roofs.

“Students in the green industry truly are the next generation of the industry,” said Chris Foster, president and CEO of GIE Media. “We view this award as just one way we can support the incoming class of entrepreneurs, stand-out professionals and researchers in all the industries we serve.”

To be eligible for a scholarship, students had to be enrolled at a recognized two- or four-year college or university and working toward a degree in horticulture, environmental science or other fields related to a segment of the green industry.