The Matt Cherney VEX Robotics Scholarship

This past week my husband and I selected a scholarship recipient. On Wednesday, May 18th, the Matt Cherney VEX Robotics Scholarship will be presented. It is given with great grief and great joy. May is a hard month for us. Matt's birthday, his sister's high school graduation and party, our anniversary (this year on Mother's Day), Mother's Day, and the scholarship selection all fell in the first eight days of the month. Yeah. Whew is right.

We are incredibly thankful, however, for God's provision. Without the amazing generosity of family and friends this $1000 scholarship wouldn't be possible. Matt had a gift with computers and programming. Anyone that knew him discovered that quickly. He had a passion for computer technology that would have been a perfect fit with VEX Robotics. I am forever grateful that Matt's memory, talents, and skills live on through this scholarship.

Our grief is great, but our joy is as well. Knowing that Matt, through this scholarship, is touching the lives of students who share his passion is a great, great comfort. Thank you, dear family and friends, for helping to redeem our pain, comfort us in our grief, and exemplify the body of Christ.

 THE MATT CHERNEY VEX ROBOTICS SCHOLARSHIP

Matt Cherney attended Mankato East High School in the 2010-11 school year as a sophomore student. At age 16, Matt’s passion was computers, specifically programming and trouble-shooting. He was self-taught and loved learning everything he could about programming. In his own words from his Facebook page, he said, “I LOVE Java, C/C++, JavaFX, XHTML, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and XML. OH! And Perl, and C#, and...” Matt surpassed even his dad in his knowledge of computers (which is impressive since his dad is a senior programmer/analyst of over 20 years).

Matt joined the BPA club (Business Professionals of America) at the beginning of the school year and quickly proved his skills were on par when he placed 1st in PC Servicing & Troubleshooting and 5th in Java Programming at the BPA Regional Competition. Since East High School no longer offers a BPA club, the Matt Cherney scholarship is now being offered through East High’s Vex Robotics program. Vex Robotics is a program Matt would definitely have participated in with great joy.

If you are interested in contributing to the scholarship fund, please email me. Our hope and desire, of course, is to offer this scholarship for many, many years to come.