Unusual Dollars for Scholars : Education: If you’re left-handed, or if you have the right surname, you may qualify for one of many arcane college scholarships. But you’ve got to know where to look for them.

Ryan Watje has always had a thing for pigs. Breeding pigs, bottle-feeding piglets, collecting out-of-state boar semen via air mail. Watje, the mini-mogul of a 25-sow empire in Salinas, parlayed his pig mania into hard cash this year when he won a $500 International Boar Semen Scholarship.

The 20-year-old pig-o-phile, who attends Modesto Junior College, was one of 55 applicants for the award, given annually by the Future Farmers of America. He admits the esoteric nature of pig breeding limited the competition.

“Not too many people are into boar semen,” says Watje, whose R. W. Hog Farms is under his parents’ care. “People don’t really understand (his interest in) it. You just have to have had some experience in pigs.” (Experience must pay off. Watje has won an additional $2,000 in scholarships, all related to pig farming.)

Interest in swine is not the only criterion for arcane academic scholarships. There are awards for southpaws, chronic underachievers and students whose surname is Leavenworth, among others.

Finding takers for these funds isn’t easy, especially given their bizarre requirements (usually, special requests of the beneficiaries). Difficulty in meeting such qualifications compounds problems many students face in locating even conventional scholarship money.

There are more than 200,000 academic and vocational scholarships--worth about $15 billion--available in the United States. But more than $6.6 billion goes unused every year, according to a 1986 study.

“The biggest problem is students and parents don’t know where to look for scholarships,” says Daniel J. Cassidy of the National Scholarship Research Service (NSRS), a Santa Rosa-based organization that helps students find scholarships.

For arcane awards, which he says make up about 10% of all scholarships, the problem is even worse because the requirements are, well, so hard to fulfill.

Consider the Harvard Radcliffe Scholarships for students admitted to either school whose surnames are Murphy, Baxendale, Borden, Anderson, Bright, Downer or Pennoyer. The scholarships, based on financial need, help defray the $16,560 annual tuition.

The Frederick and Mary Beckley Scholarship is for needy left-handed freshman entering Juniata College in Huntington, Pa., where tuition is a $11,520 a year. Senior Erik Reedinger has received the $700 scholarship for four years. All he had to do, he says, is check a box on his application stating that he is left-handed.

UC Berkeley also has funds for lefties. The Elmer Baum Scholarship helps sinistrals in the College of Engineering who are studying analog electronics. Berkeley’s annual tuition is $2,678, and the Baum scholarship pays between $500 and $600.

Shunning sports and taking former First Lady Nancy Reagan’s advice of just saying no to vices can help freshmen at Pennsylvania’s Bucknell University win the Gertrude J. Deppen Scholarship. To qualify, a student may not drink, smoke, chew tobacco or take illegal drugs and must abstain from competitive, strenuous sports. And yes, there is another crucial requirement: Students must be graduates of Mt. Carmel High School in Mt. Carmel, Pa.--or they must have lived in that community for at least 10 years. A year’s tuition at Bucknell is $15,550.

In the spirit of “shoepeople helping shoepeople,” the Two/Ten International Footwear Foundation awards scholarships--for up to $2,000--to children of people working in the industry. Recipient Niza Motola, who says her shoe collection makes her “sometimes feel like Imelda,” attends Columbia University, where a year’s tuition is $15,520.

“I was looking to find money anywhere when I was applying to colleges,” says Motola, 20, whose parents both work in the industry. “Because most of the scholarships are ethnic or academic, I found it really strange that I could get the scholarship because my parents worked with shoes.”

Scholarships attached to unusual surnames are the bane of some financial aid directors. Consider the scholarship started at Yale in the 1880s for all students whose last name is Leavenworth. William Bidwell, the university’s recording secretary, says: “It’s been a problem historically, because we can’t find recipients for it, so the scholarship money (based on financial need) goes unused.”

Roberta Leavenworth of West Los Angeles, who has 7-year-old twin girls, says: “We’ve had people call who are Leavenworths and they say, ‘If you have children you can take advantage of it. . . .’ Friends ask us to adopt their kids. It’s really funny. What parent wouldn’t want their children to go to Yale--especially on a scholarship?”

In the meantime, the twins are attending private school and their parents have set their sights on the Ivy League school. After all, a year’s tuition is about $16,300.

Loyola University in Chicago has been under a Zolp alert for the last 14 years. A scholarship to the school, where tuition is $9,210 a year, was set up in 1977 by Father William Algerd Zolp to benefit Catholic students sharing his surname.

The problem, says financial aid director James Dwyer, is that it’s hard to find Zolps. Indeed, only three have taken advantage of the scholarship so far. One of them just married and plans to pass on her maiden name to her children so that they, too, may benefit from the scholarship, Dwyer says.

And what happens if a Zolp is not a Catholic but converts?

“I don’t really care,” responds an exasperated Dwyer. “As long as they have a letter from the parish priest.”

Some beneficiaries left such a rigorous set of requirements that no one could take advantage of the award. At Berkeley, the Malcolm R. Stacey scholarship was started in 1978 for Jewish orphans who study aeronautical science. More than half a million dollars in unclaimed scholarship money accrued $50,000 in interest a year until the school went to court in 1988 because it was unable to find a recipient.

The eligibility requirements were broadened; they now state only that a Jewish student be interested in aeronautical science and attend any of the schools in the University of California system. The scholarship is given out in $3,000 awards, says Elizabeth Menist, an administrative analyst at Berkeley’s undergraduate scholarship office.

“However, if there ever was a Jewish orphan who wanted to study aeronautical science, of course, they would have first preference,” she says.

For high school seniors who have been caddies for at least two years and are in the top 25% of their class, the Western Golf Assn. offers full four-year tuition scholarships to 14 universities.

For gifted chess players with a talent for tournament games, the Chess Talent Scholarship offers $6,000 scholarships each year at Rhode Island College, where state residents pay $2,300 a year.

There’s even a scholarship for being average. The anti-achievement Letterman Scholarship (as in David) is given to seniors in the telecommunications department at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., if they are creative, yet average.

Three scholarships are awarded based on the creativity of video projects. First place is $7,270.(A year’s tuition at Ball State is $11,140.)

A plaque hangs at the entrance to the department’s control room. It reads: Dedicated To All C Students Before Me and After Me-- David Letterman.