NEW UVIC GRADS SHINE AT SPRING CONVOCATION CEREMONIES

More than 2,400 students are eligible to graduate at the University of Victoria's Spring 1999 Convocation ceremonies this week (June 2-4). Among them are:

Top medal winners:

Throughout her childhood, Sharlene Hudson hated science and wanted to be an English prof or a poet. But a great chemistry teacher in Grade 11 changed all that. This week Hudson graduates from UVic with a BSc in biology &emdash; and the Governor General's silver medal as the top undergraduate in this year's graduating class. Hudson plans to be a doctor specializing in eating disorders. [VS]

In the world of experimental particle physics, Steven Robertson excels. While earning his PhD at UVic, Robertson made some of the most significant findings to come out of Canadian particle physics in several years. His work has earned him international recognition, a prime research position with a major U.S. university, and the Governor General's gold medal for academic excellence in the faculty of graduate studies. [MM]

Pascale Poussart likes to talk about the weather, but not today's, tomorrow's or even yesterday's. She's created a computer model of what the climate may have been like on earth about 440 million years ago. Poussart graduates this week with an MSc in earth and ocean sciences &emdash; and the Lieutenant Governor's silver medal as the top master's-level graduate student. She now heads for Harvard and a PhD. [VS]

Other grads:

Elizabeth Rotenburger has been blind since birth, but she's never viewed that as an obstacle in her life. "I don't think of it as something I've overcome," says Rotenburger, who graduates with a degree in writing and anthropology this week. As a student, she used a reading machine to scan typewritten material, a "type and speak" device to take notes in class, and speech software that converted her PC into a talking computer. [VS]

When Ellen Brown attends Convocation this week, she'll be meeting most of her fellow nursing graduates for the first time. Brown began studying part-time towards her degree in 1992. In the subsequent years she continued working, nursed her dying husband, bought a new house, remarried, juggled an extended family of six children and became a grandmother. She completed her degree through teleconferences and study groups. [PP]

Raven August, who graduates from UVic this week with a BA in leisure service administration, is one of nine native people chosen for Health Canada's 1998/99 National Native Role Model Program. The program selects role models to challenge and inspire Native youth to make positive choices in their lives. "She'll be a leader among aboriginal peoples in Canada," predicts leisure studies co-op co-ordinator Dr. Martin Hendy. [RL]

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