Restaurant Week Helps Add More Scholarship Money for GRCC’s Secchia Institute for Culinary Education

Restaurant Week Grand Rapids restaurants, restaurant chefs, and sponsors, announced  four scholarship winners from Grand Rapids Community College’s Secchia Institute for Culinary Education who received financial assistance from Restaurant Week donations. More than 60 participating restaurants donated $1 from Restaurant Week meals sold during the August 2014 event and a total check for $18,019 was presented to the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education Student Scholarship Fund at GRCC, growing the fund to an impressive $92,689 from 2010 to 2014 since Restaurant Week Grand Rapids began five years ago.

The four students who received the $1000 scholarship awards included:
• Megan Amante who is employed by the Mitten Brewing Company and a second time winner of the scholarship award;
• Kara Faasen who works at the B.O.B.;
• Emily Dilly who works as a line cook at CityFlats Hotel; and
• Jeffery Myers who works at Tre Cugini.

All four students offered big thanks, and said that the award money will be a big help to them for their culinary training. Each winner has their own dreams and goals. Kara Faasen wants to own a restaurant or bakery that also caters to wedding clients. Megan Amante would like to be a personal chef and would love to help families around Grand Rapids eat well by providing balanced and thoughtfully prepared meals that she would prepare in the comfort of their own homes. Emily Dilly would like to create a line of cookbooks, and Jeffery Myers would like to work in Europe, preferably in pastry, to expand his horizons of food and cooking.

This is the third year that students have been awarded scholarship money from the fund established by Restaurant Week Grand Rapids in 2010. All of the funds to date have been added to an endowed student scholarship fund at Grand Rapids Community College Foundation to specifically benefit the Secchia Institute for Culinary Education. A proportion of the money has been awarded to qualifying students since 2012.