12-03-2025
Wichita State awards $65K in scholarships to entrepreneurial students
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — The W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University has announced the two recipients of the 2025 Professor Fran Jabara Endowed Scholarship.
This year's winners are Wyatt Ochs, a homeschool student from Wichita, and Jennifer C. Sanchez-Reyes from Derby High School.
They will each receive more than $32,700 over four years to attend WSU and major in entrepreneurship.
Eight Wichita teachers awarded as outstanding
Ochs operates a lawn care business with over 50 weekly clients and four employees, which he started in 2019. He also runs a woodworking company and a goose prevention service called Goos-B-Gone.
'My entrepreneurial goal is to take the knowledge I have learned from my current business and the knowledge I will learn at Wichita State to start a business in college and expand it after graduation,' Ochs said in a news release.
Sanchez-Reyes owns a small jewelry business that designs and sells bracelets. Before earning the scholarship, she was unsure if she would attend school.
'Honestly, this scholarship has changed my life completely,' Sanchez-Reyes said in a news release. 'A few days before getting the amazing news, I started to think that maybe college was going to be too expensive and I considered not attending. I was getting a little discouraged. Now that I have the opportunity to attend college as a Jabara Scholar, I will be able to focus on learning and not how I can pay for it.'
The Jabara Scholarship is one of the largest of its kind nationally for entrepreneurs.
'The Barton School was a pioneer in offering a dedicated entrepreneurship major, and we continue to stand at the forefront of entrepreneurial education,' Larisa Genin, dean of the Barton School of Business, said in a statement. 'The Jabara Scholars are an integral part of this enduring legacy, poised to forge their own path in the world of innovation and business.'
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