Target Audience
High school students
Purpose
The Kelman Scholarship has been established to support an outstanding high school student that is interested in the protection of water quality and is planning on attending a post secondary institution in a related field of study.
Eligibility
Applicants must:
- be registered in an Ontario high school at the time of application, with the intent to move to college or university the following year;
- have an interest in environmental issues, particularly water quality protection;
- not have received the scholarship previously.
Entry Requirements
Applicants must submit:
- a completed application form;
- A teacher reference form describing skills, interests, initiative;
- A 500 word essay (done on computer with WORD) outlining the applicant’s interests in environmental issues related to water quality protection and how they might use these interests as an educational and career opportunity.
Timeline for Submission
Completed applications with reference letter and essay must be received no later than December 1, 2026. The recipient will be notified by mail as well as recognized in the Association’s magazine INFLUENTS.
Support Provided
The 2026 Kelman scholarship includes one (1) award of $500. The scholarship is provided by Craig Kelman and Associates Ltd. of Winnipeg Manitoba, the publisher of WEAO’s INFLUENTS magazine.
Selection Criteria
A scholarship Committee will evaluate the applicants based on the completion of the application form, the content of the reference form, and the strength of the essay i.e. does it show a genuine interest in environmental issues related to water quality and a willingness to consider an education/career in the water quality protection field.
The successful student will be notified by telephone and mail and asked to share the news with the rest of their school.
Submission and Questions
The application and all required attachments should be emailed in a single PDF file (<10 MB) to scholarship@weaocommitttee.org. Any questions about the scholarship can be directed to the same email address. Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are posted on the scholarship website: http://www.weao.org/resources.
Frequently Asked Questions
Eligibility
Anyone currently in the final year of high school, who plans to attend College or University next year enrolled in an environmental/water quality related program.
Application Form
No, do not submit a résumé or CV. If you do, they will be discarded.
References (Professor & Employer)
A referee is the person who gives you a reference; they must complete the Reference Form and submit it directly to WEAO.
At a minimum, you must give your referee an electronic or paper copy of the Reference Form. In addition, you may wish to supply them with the Scholarship Brochure to tell them about the Kelman Scholarship, your résumé, and any other information you feel will help your referee to properly fill out the reference form.
Essay
Your essay word count will be double-checked upon submission, and you will be penalized if your essay is over 500 words.
The word count is that determined by your word-processing software used to type your essay. For example, in Microsoft Word®, go to Tools –> Word Count and enter on your application form the number of words listed there. If your word count is higher than 500, you must edit your essay to be more succinct and decrease your word count to 500 or fewer.
Yes, you can include citations in the text of your essay and include a list of references at the end. The word count will include only the in-text citations (e.g. “Smith et al. 2000”). The list of references at the end will not count towards the word limit.
Reference using APA style. In text citations should be of the format “(Smith et all., 2000)”. The reference list should be of the following format: Smith, J.F., Smith, A.T., & King, A.G (2000). Phosphorus recovery in wastewater treatment. Sewage Works Journal 32, 344-348.
Submission Logistics
All submissions that are received at the scholarship@weaocommittee.org email address will be acknowledged by return email. This is true for both applications as well as reference forms. If you submitted an application or your referee submitted a reference form, but did not receive an acknowledgement within a week, please call the WEAO office at 416-410-6933 ext.1.
PDF is a standard file format for documents. You can create PDF files using Adobe Acrobat, other software, and PDF print drivers. You can view PDF files using the freely- available Adobe reader (http://get.adobe.com/reader/) or other software packages.
Separate the PDF file into enough files so that each individual file is <10 MB. Then email each file in a separate email. In the subject line of your email, indicate the # of emails; for example, if you have two files then send two emails including in your subject titles “1 of 2” and “2 of 2”.
Note that your referee must submit their reference form directly to WEAO; applicant’s cannot submit it on their behalf. For electronic submission, a scanner can be used to convert the paper document into a PDF file. Copy shops should also be able to provide this service.
There are free software packages that will do this for you. An example is “PdfEdit995” available at http://www.pdfedit995.com/.