Brainchild of Harrison County School Counselor, ScholarshipCentral.net Aims to Bridge Gap Between Students and Funding
By Michael Minnich on July 23, 2026
When Kyra Burnett was hired by Liberty High School in its final year to be the counselor for the 11th and 12th grades, she saw a need.
“I decided one of the best ways to help some of those students, because they decided to stick around, was to put out as many scholarships as I could,” Burnett said. “I had a nice bulletin board across from me and I had so many paper scholarships that I put up that way, and then I would post ones that I found online as well. I had a goal of putting up 100.”
In the end? She posted 147.
Looking ahead to this past school year and making the move to Robert C. Byrd to be the 11th-grade counselor, that seed of her time at Liberty grew into an idea.
“I started thinking, ‘What if I made a Google site?’ That would make it a little easier. I could format it better,” Burnett said. “That was my goal going into Byrd: I want to transfer this over and post even more scholarships.”
For the 2025-26 school year, she posted 227.
“So many kids don’t realize that there are tons out there,” Burnett said. “But the other piece was my counselor part kicking in and thinking, well, there’s so many resources they need in order to be able to complete those applications.”
So Burnett launched ScholarshipCentral.net, an information-packed but user-friendly online extension of that board at Liberty.
“I ended up putting in things for college applications, essay writing, testing assistance and helpful tips, forms and documents with templates on them. It was nice to see not just my school using it, but students at Bridgeport, at Lincoln, at South Harrison, even students in different counties,” Burnett said. “I heard how much it impacted people.”
That led to the next evolution.
“There are so many scholarships that are specific to a school or a county and I started doing some more research on, well, what does this look like here in West Virginia?” Burnett said. “We’ve always been historically ranked among the states with the highest student loan delinquency and default rates.
“That’s a huge piece of what pushed me to make this a statewide initiative instead of just a Harrison County initiative,” Burnett said. “It’s not just for Harrison County.”
Now, the ‘Local by County’ page on Scholarship Central allows you to find scholarships specific to all 55 counties in West Virginia and even scholarships at the national level and for adult learners.
It then groups the scholarships by Currently Active, Upcoming and Past Due.
“I wanted to make sure it was easy to find because you go to these other scholarship sites and it feels like you have to give over your left arm in order to find something that applies to you,” Burnett said. “I think that deters so many students because our attention spans are so quick and so if it can’t be found within 10 seconds, they’re kind of done with it.”
The Past Due section is about the future as well as the present.
“If I put those in there, while you might not be able to apply for it in the ninth, 10th or 11th grade, those grades and still go to that and see, ‘Okay, this is a scholarship that I could apply to next year. It’s past due for these seniors, but when it’s time for me, I can apply for that,’” Burnett said. “These scholarships that I post are also often not just for high school seniors, but also for current college students.”
Burnett shared one of the success stories from this school year.
“I had a student come in and ask for a letter of recommendation. It was so nice because she said, ‘You made this so easy on me because all I did was go to your website, look at the resources and download all of the templates.’ She handed all of my own templates back to me for me to do the letter of recommendation,” Burnett said. “I looked at her and was like, ‘I’m so proud of you because that’s amazing that you thought to do that but also thank you for looking through that and seeing it was helpful to you.’”
Burnett, who has also been an active girls basketball coach in the county, including as head coach at Bridgeport Middle, recently added an athletics hub to Scholarship Central.
“I reached out to 65 different college coaches here in West Virginia to make sure that it is accurate and up to date,” Burnett said.
One of the 10 that replied so far was Fairmont State women’s basketball coach Stephanie Anderson.
“She was thankful that it was created because so many student-athletes in West Virginia have no idea what they’re supposed to do. Unless you have somebody in your family or your friend group that went through a recruitment process, you have no idea what that looks like," Burnett said. "It’s important to make sure that they know these little tidbits and what makes you more marketable to a coach and what could completely turn off a coach, like parents being overbearing or social media not being looked over before you start your process.”
A future goal is an app, one of the projects that Burnett hopes to give to volunteers that she’s in the process of securing from West Virginia University.
“We’re looking for a coding volunteer,” Burnett said. “We also want a research volunteer that’s managerial to help me to find scholarships and make sure that everything on the site is up to date.”
The site also sends out a newsletter on the first day of each month, but the app is the next leap.
“It’s different when you have an app on your phone that can alert you and remind you of certain things. That’s my hope in the future in the next couple of years as we get that rolling,” Burnett said.
The site was approved recently as a non-profit and will fund a small scholarship of its own.
“The scholarship is specifically for high school seniors, and I have a board of directors who will go through the applications blindly. They won’t see any names or identifying features,” Burnett said. “It’s going to be $250, but my hope is now that it’s a non-profit, we can get donations to make it bigger and add more scholarships to that just for students that use Scholarship Central.”
Bottom line, the site exists because Burnett “wants students to want to stay here and I want them to be able to make it and not think they can’t make it because they’re from West Virginia.
“I want them to know they can because they’re from here.”
For more information, visit ScholarshipCentral.net or contact Burnett at kyra@scholarshipcentral.net.
Editor's Note: Photo submitted by Kyra Burnett from her time at Liberty.
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