Yakama Nation Member to Receive 2025 Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship Award
March 18, 2025 | 2 min to read
The Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship Foundation (KGASF) awarded the 2025 scholarship to Ilene Goudy, a member of the Yakama Nation and Environmental Science student at Heritage University. Goudy, who has extensive experience in fisheries restoration, aims to integrate her family's traditional eco-knowledge into fisheries management. KGASF, created to honor Kurt Grinnell, supports Indigenous students in aquaculture and natural resources, promoting food security and community well-being.
Gig Harbor, WA — The Kurt Grinnell Aquaculture Scholarship Foundation (KGASF) announced that it has named Yakama Nation member, Ilene Goudy, as its first award recipient for 2025. Goudy, an Environmental Science student at Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington, has deep family roots in the Cle Elum, Ellensburg, and Wenatchee areas of the state, and hopes to bring to the field of fisheries management, land use, and enhancement her family’s “traditional eco-knowledge.”
According to John Dentler, KGASF Executive Director, Goudy’s decade-long experience working in fisheries restoration “made a significant impression on the members of the Scholarship Selection Committee.”
In addition to working as a Fisheries Technician on Coho salmon in the Methow Basin, raising Spring Chinook salmon in the Upper Yakama River Basin, and working part of the year at the Yakama Nation’s Cle Elum, Washington, Hatchery, Goudy also has worked on habitat improvement and related projects in the Yakama River Basin.
Jaiden Grinnell Bosick, KGASF Board Chair and head of the Selection Committee, added: “We are so pleased to see a hard worker like Ilene Goudy continue to pursue her education while at the same time doing important fisheries work for the Yakama Nation. We are confident that Ilene Goudy will make a significant contribution to the management and conservation of natural resources so important to her Tribe and the surrounding community.”
The KGASF was established to honor the legacy of the late Kurt Grinnell, a Native American leader from the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in Washington State, who saw aquaculture as a solution to Tribal food security, and Indigenous reconciliation and wellbeing. Toward that end, KGASF provides financial assistance to Tribal and First Nation students who wish to pursue careers in aquaculture and natural resources.