The IBMA Bluegrass College Scholarship awards one $1,000 award to a student who is studying bluegrass music or a related major on the college level. The first scholarship was awarded in fall 2021. The deadline to apply for the 2022 scholarship is June 1, 2022. Read more here. Go here to download the application. 

The Foundation is working to build an endowment fund at the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee which will support this scholarship into the future. Contact us if you would like to contribute to this worthy bluegrass cause!

Our gratitude is extended to Mark Hodges at Mountain Fever Records who initiated funding for this important scholarship with a challenge donation to other bluegrass record labels, to Lee Zapis of Z Mandolins for donating $1,000 for each of his first 12 mandolins sold in 2020, to Joe Mullins & His Radio Ramblers for a fan breakfast fundraiser at their festival in Ohio, and to Alan Tompkins at the Bluegrass Heritage Foundation, along with many more kind supporters.   

Left: The East Tennessee State University Bluegrass Pride Band (2019)

Autumn Moore, a student at Pennsylvania State University (left), was the first recipient of the IBMA Bluegrass College Scholarship in 2021.

A fiddler, guitar and mandolin player from Newport, PA, she will be studying Environmental Resource Management this fall at Pennsylvania State University. As a member of the Schreyer Honors Program, Moore plans to create a new course of study to continue her bluegrass music development and start a Penn State Bluegrass Band.

Autumn was nominated in the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bluegrass Event of the Year category for her production of TBS (Tomorrow’s Bluegrass Stars), an online bluegrass festival which featured four days of free, live-streamed music from 41 youth bands from 19 different states.

Since 2015 Autumn has served as an administrative assistant at Ashokan Center fiddle camps in New York state, and she plays in a band with her brother called Buffalo Mountain Bluegrass.

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