The Caffrey Welles Fine Arts Award is a scholarship given out at the Wilkes-Barre Area School District to encourage students to complete an extracurricular fine arts project. Students are free to submit original poetry, artwork, writings, sculpture or anything artistic that they are interested in and document online. From full novels to short poems the award has encouraged students to pursue their passions and interests outside of the curriculum set in the classroom. The award is named after Mollie Caffrey and Kevin Welles two excellent teachers that taught at E. L. Meyers High school as the Iseman children attended high school and now teach at WBASD school district.

Each year students are provided these guidelines that outline what the judges are looking for in a successful Arts Award project submission. Submissions need to be documented online and then the Iseman Foundation judges rank the projects and award higher cash prizes from 5th through 1st place with every project that is submitted receiving at least a $50 participation award.

How can I help?  

The Arts award started as an extension of the BEST award. After seeing the awesome STEM projects that we received each year we decided to offer an Arts Award that would give the less scientifically inclined students a way to exercise their creativity and get rewarded for following their passions. If you want to start a scholarship honoring one of the great teachers that you had then you should reach out to them. The first year that the BEST award was offered we only awarded a $1,000 prize. To a high school student even a $100 prize can be quite significant. If you think you might want to start something similar to the BEST or Arts award send a quick email about it right now to your old school. If you would like any advice please feel free to reach out to us. As part of an Instructables contest Adam Iseman also wrote a guide on how to create your own scholarship that can be found here.

The Iseman Foundation exists because of generous donations from alumni, friends and family members. 100% of donations go directly to helping the awards that we put on. If you would like to donate to support the Arts award follow the instructions here.