Every Monroe and Sultan high school senior is given the opportunity to fill out the Monroe Rotary Scholarship Application.  The SOM committee reviews the applications and while we’re looking for a well-rounded student, we’re looking for a very heavy emphasis on community service/involvement. 

Each application will be reviewed by the Student of the Month (SOM) Committee. The SOM committee will select approximately 25 students from each school to interview and spend a full day in January at each high school.

The interview process includes a series of questions on a variety of topics including: academic, leadership, community service, future plans, peer pressure, extracurricular, etc.  The interviews are scored and from those, we chose our Top 12 from Monroe and generally, Top 8 from Sultan (it’s a much smaller class size) and they become our Students of the Month.  The selected students are invited to one of three Rotary luncheons – one each in January, March and May.  Each of the luncheons are specifically focused on the Students of the Month and provides each o them with an opportunity to speak about their future plans, favorite community service project, etc.

One of the requirements of our students is to complete a community service project, which in all past years has been a food drive.  They have some guidance from the SOM committee, but the food drive is theirs to plan and execute.  The year over year results are mind-blowing – a couple of thousand in cash and several thousand pounds of food.  During the food drive, the students are being scored on participation, involvement, leadership, attendance in meetings, etc.  We take their interview scores along with their food drive scores and choose our scholarship recipients – each receiving a $1000 scholarship to the school of their choice.