Rogers-Lowell Area News

Beaver Water District Board Members Recognize UA Students with Steele-Croxton Memorial Scholarships

During its regularly scheduled board meeting held Feb. 15, the Beaver Water District (BWD) Board of Directors recognized University of Arkansas students Zachary Tipton of Fayetteville, Trent Woessner of Fayetteville, and Emily Sherrill of Rogers with Steele-Croxton Memorial Scholarships, which are funded by participating Beaver Water District board members.

Beaver Water District is governed by a six-member elected board of directors, with three members from Washington County and three from Benton County. Board members serve six-year terms, staggered by two years in each county.
Tipton, who is finishing his last semester of undergraduate studies at the University of Arkansas (UA) with a major in Environmental, Soil and Water Science, is minoring in Mandarin Chinese and Statistics. A non-traditional student, he’s studied abroad on many occasions, works fulltime in a UA computer lab to support his family, and tutors lower level students of Chinese through the UA International Programs office.

Woessner is a junior in the UA Biological Engineering Program and also is pursuing a minor in Sustainability. “Without the scholarship, my family and I would suffer a tremendous financial burden,” he wrote in his thank you letter.

Sherrill, also a junior at the UA, is majoring in Civil Engineering and has already completed a minor in Spanish. “I hope to someday serve the northwest Arkansas community as a professional engineer with an environmental focus.”

The scholarships, funded through voluntary contributions by participating BWD Board members and other interested individuals and organizations, is named for the late Joe M. Steele and the late Hardy W. Croxton, leaders and past Board members. The Memorial Scholarship Fund provides support to qualified students within the UA’s College of Engineering and College of Agriculture. The scholarship’s aim is to support students studying and exploring careers related to water.

The mission of BWD is to serve customers’ needs by providing high quality drinking water that meets or exceeds all regulatory requirements and is economically priced consistent with our quality standards. BWD supplies clean, safe drinking water, sourced from Beaver Lake, at the wholesale price of $1.34 per thousand gallons to Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville. These cities in Northwest Arkansas then pump, store, distribute and resell the water to their customers -- more than 320,000 people and industries in their cities and surrounding areas.