Megan Johnson wins $500 NMRC scholarship for Bemidji robotics

Megan Johnson’s $500 scholarship from the Northern Minnesota Robotics Conference gives Bemidji High School’s RoboJacks a concrete win: money that can help one of Beltrami County’s student robot builders keep moving toward life after graduation.

Johnson, a member of the RoboJacks, team #4674, received the NMRC General Scholarship, one of the conference’s annual awards for students on member FIRST Robotics teams in northwestern Minnesota. The scholarship is open to eligible students who have spent their high school years building, coding and competing through the robotics program, and NMRC says recipients can use that support while pursuing a wide range of postsecondary paths, not just STEM degrees.

That matters in Bemidji because the award is not only about one student’s résumé. It points to an active robotics pipeline already in place in Beltrami County, where students at Bemidji High School can compete on a team connected to a regional network of FIRST programs. For students who want college, technical training or another form of postsecondary education, the scholarship is one of the few direct financial supports tied to robotics participation in northern Minnesota.

NMRC said its scholarship fund was established in the fall of 2020, and the organization awarded its first scholarships during the 2021-22 school year. The program includes a separate $500 scholarship for under-represented groups, which in the same announcement went to Lukas Hruby of Warroad High School’s F.R.E.D. Robotics team #2883. Together, the awards show a broader effort to keep students from member teams connected to robotics and to the region after high school.

For Bemidji students, the takeaway is practical: robotics is not just an extracurricular heading into competition season. It can also open a path to named scholarship support, regional recognition and a stronger bridge from the RoboJacks program into college, technical programs or other career training after graduation.