UVic Grads have High Marks and Big Dreams

Almost 2,500 students will graduate at the University of Victoria's spring 2001 convocation ceremonies on June 6--8. During the seven ceremonies in the University Centre Farquhar Auditorium, UVic Chancellor Dr. Norma Mickelson will award degrees, diplomas and certificates as follows:

June 6, 9:30 a.m.--education
June 6, 1:30 p.m.--human & social development, continuing studies
June 6, 4:30 p.m.--science
June 7, 9:30 a.m.--social sciences
June 7, 2:00 p.m.--business, law, social sciences
June 8, 9:30 a.m.--humanities
June 8, 2:00 p.m.--engineering, fine arts

Some of the students are award winners; many overcame daunting challenges to successfully complete their degrees. Below is a selection of this year's special students:

Governor General's Gold Medal (best PhD dissertation)
After six years of painstaking lab work, biochemist Michael Kuzyk developed a new fish vaccine--and won the Governor General's Gold Medal as the top PhD student in the class of 2000-01. He graduated last November, but picks up his medal at June convocation.

Lieutenant Governor's Silver Medal (best master's thesis)
History in Art student Husein Keshani won this year's medal for his study of Nizamuddin, a Delhi Sultanate tomb complex and its surrounding buildings.

Governor General's Silver Medal (best undergraduate student)
and Victoria Medal (Best fine arts graduate)
Pianist Stephen Runge graduates with a Bachelor of Music (performance) with a perfect grade point average of 9.0--earning him two medals.

Jubilee Medal for Humanities
Linguistics grad Kate Ballem will have the summer to savour her Jubilee Medal as the top student in UVic's faculty of humanities. This fall she heads to England's famed Oxford University as B.C.'s only 2001 Rhodes Scholar.

Jubilee Medal for Science
While studying physics and computer science, Dan O'Neill completed co-op work terms at the U.K. Infrared Telescope in Hawaii and the Penticton Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton. A drummer and a guitarist, O'Neill also completed several music courses along with his science studies.

Jubilee Medal for Social Sciences
Frank Vitek is graduating with a BSc in economics and is currently working with the Bank of Canada in Vancouver developing models to study the link between inflation uncertainty and economic growth. He's considering a master's in mathematical finance before pursuing a PhD in financial econometrics.

Maxwell Cameron Memorial Medal (Education)
Elementary
Monica Noon has been involved with children her entire life through babysitting, tutoring, volunteer work and working as a program instructor at both the Burnaby and Port Moody parks and recreation departments. She is currently a teacher-on-call in Victoria, teaching in French immersion and English-language classrooms from Kindergarten to Grade 7.

Secondary
When Shane Brown was 11, his first karate teacher inspired him to pursue a career in education. This year's Cameron Memorial Medal winner now holds third-degree black belts in Goju-Ryu karate and Kobudo (a martial art using weapons), has won several Western Canadian and national titles, and is a sought-after martial arts instructor. Brown plans to teach in the Victoria area, pursue further martial arts training in California and Japan, and eventually open his own martial arts dojo.

Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering Medal
Curran Crawford has always wanted to "design things€to find different ways to solve problems," and he'll have plenty of opportunity to do just that. In the fall he begins work on his master's degree in computational fluid dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has a teacher's assistant position that will cover his tuition and accommodation while being exposed to the leading edge aerospace labs of the venerable research school.

Department of Computer Science Graduation Medal
Thirty-one-year-old Yiping Mao, came to Canada four years ago and embraced an opportunity for change--she jumped headfirst into the high-tech world of computers, after a decade of chemistry studies in China.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering) medals:

• Quadra Island-raised Brian Gouge is a graduate of CARI High school in Campbell River and is the top graduating student with a BEng in computer engineering.He's always enjoyed working with computers and starts a job as a software engineer in June in Vancouver with Alcatel, a Paris-based company.
• Neil Carson is the top graduating student with a BEng in electrical engineering

Commerce Students' Society Medal of Excellence
A top curler with four visits to the provincial championships, Shannon Gallaugher participated in the faculty's new "Athena" focus club for women, served on the dean's student advisory council for two years, and helped form the UVic chapter of the Golden Key International Honour Society for students in the top 15 per cent of their faculty. Last year, she spent a co-op work term with the Vancouver Canucks' front office.

Law Society Gold Medal (Best law graduate)
Before coming to UVic, Talha Syed earned a political science degree at the University of Western Ontario, spent a year in Korea teaching English and six months in South Africa volunteering as a researcher for a non-governmental organization investigating police corruption. He's currently in Boston preparing for LLM studies at Harvard in the fall.

Ethiopian-born Elias Cheboud fled his country as a refugee 20 years ago, where he was a victim of torture and violence. Though he had been studying to be a physician, he had to start his education from scratch in Canada, and is now graduating with a PhD in education. In addition to working part-time and volunteering for immigrant groups throughout his 10 years of education, he's also a husband and father of two teenage sons.

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