Photo: Sirisak Boakaew / Moment / Getty Images
(Madison, WI) -- Alliant Energy is trying to get more students interested in power solutions. The utility is awarding 25 students in Iowa and Wisconsin $1,000 scholarships for energy innovation. Applicants will find a problem in their hometown and then come up with a solution using a STEM-based approach.
"It's really a valuable way for students to look at their career, look at an issue, with this specifically a part of the application," said Andy Kitslaar, executive director of the Alliant Energy Foundation. "A future student is looking at creating an essay looking at a problem in their community and presenting their own innovative solution using science, technology, engineering and math."
Kitslaar says they see a lot of great ideas come through the program.
"We've really had a full range of different essays that have just been fascinating for us after the fact to read, as recipients," Kitslaar said, "how powerful it is that they are utilizing their knowledge, their future desires, to answer those questions and kind of rise up to that task of really making a better world for all of us."
Applications and essays are due in February.
This year, over 100 undergraduate students have received scholarships from Alliant, totaling more than $130,000.
Alliant Energy says it provides service to approximately 1,000,000 electric and approximately 425,000 natural gas customers in the Midwest.
