Sierra Pacific Power Company
Contact: Robert Sagan
Phone: (775)834-4345

For Immediate Release

Twenty-six students from the University of Nevada, Reno; Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno; and Western Nevada Community College in Carson City will be recognized tonight as recipients of the Sierra Pacific Foundation scholarship program, in ceremonies held at the utility?s Neil Road headquarters in southeast Reno.

It was last April when Sierra Pacific and the University of Nevada, Reno formally announced a Sierra Pacific Foundation pledge of $715,000 to support a variety of educational and research programs at the University, and at the Desert Research Institute over a five-year period.

Among those programs were 87 $2,000 scholarships divided among the University?s College of Engineering, College of Business Administration, and the Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering.

Two weeks after the announcement, Sierra Pacific unveiled a separate, five-year $75,000 scholarship program for three northern Nevada community colleges, including Great Basin Community College in Elko, whose five recipients were recognized in a separate ceremony last week in Elko. The program will make 150 scholarships available to the three schools.

"We feel confident these two programs will provide meaningful, long-term benefits to the schools themselves, to the students and their families," said Mark Ruelle, senior vice president and chief financial officer for Sierra Pacific Power Co."In the case of the University, this five-year contribution plan will help support the school?s goal to become the best small state university in America," he said.

Scholarship recipients include University of Nevada students Woseneneh Bekele; Dusty Casey; Brian Clowers; Allen Hornbuckle; Mario Ibarra; Michele Jeffers; Coral Taylor; Garret Taylor; Luan Van; Van Van; and Joan Wright.

Truckee Meadows scholarship recipients include Chelsea Johnson; Linh Nguyen; Cheryl Shelton; Catherine Sinocruz; and Eric Wong.

Scholarship winners from Western Nevada Community College are Jevan Burchfield; Nathan Christensen; Teresa Cox; Jennifer Kirstein; Juan Lopez; Kelly Martensen; Brian Morton; Tanya Muller; Matthew Spaulding; and Kathleen Trujillo.