2004-2005

News Release

REF NO.: 237

SUBJECT: National events a big draw for prospective students

DATE: March 10, 2005

Universities always seek to attract the best and brightest students. Increasingly universities are finding hosting a national event on campus to be a particularly successful opportunity. Shad Valley 2005 will be on Memorial’s campus from Sunday July 4, until Friday, July 20, and will feature the brightest and most enterprising senior high school students from across the country. The program is delivered through Memorial’s P.J. Gardiner Institute for Enterpriseand Entrepreneurship located in the Faculty of Business Administration building, and this will be the third year Memorial has hosted the program.

Over the past 23 years, the award-winning Shad Valley program has proven to be a life-changing experience for senior high school students interested in pushing their creative and intellectual capacity to the limit.

"Students who participate in Shad Memorial get to see the campus, meet faculty and staff and experience the culture," said Bonnie Simmons, director of the P.J. Gardiner Institute. "Most participants are impressed with the facilities on campus and fascinated by the unique outdoor experiences available to them in Newfoundlandand Labrador. Even if these students don't choose to pursue their education at Memorial, they can still act as ambassadors and spread the word about all the great things we have to offer."

Shad International is a Canadian not-for-profit organization based in Waterloo, Ontario. The ShadValleyprogram was launched in 1981, and currently boasts a network of 7,800 ShadValleyalumni, over 200 benefactors, and thousands of educators at schools nation-wide. There are 13 Rhodes Scholars among the Shad Valleyalumni. For information on Shad Valley 2005, visit www.shad.ca.

Memorial University has twice been host to the Canada-Wide Science Fair, in 1989 and 2004. This prestigious event is another ideal opportunity for students from across Canada to visit the campus and see first-hand what Memorial has to offer.

“An event like the Canada-Wide Science Fair draws hundreds of students to our campus where they get to spend a week living in residence, touring the university, and exploring the city,” said Dr. Bob Lucas, dean of science. “Memorial is far from where most students live and go to school and most would be unlikely to have a chance to visit our campus and see what we have to offer were it not for the CWSF.”

Jaime McDonald knows first-hand the benefits of participating in science fairs. At the 2004 Canada-Wide Science Fair, Ms. McDonald and her partner, Ian Dugas, won a gold medal for their project which explored how blueberries can fight disease-causing bacteria. Ms. McDonald was offered numerous scholarships as a result of her gold medal win, including a four-year full tuition scholarship to Memorial University. After considering her options, she accepted Memorial’s offer and is pursuing a bachelor of science in pharmacy degree.

“My participation in the science fair helped me tremendously,” said Ms. McDonald, an 18-year-old from Kentville, Nova Scotia. “Not only because of the scholarship I received, but because of the experience I gained. I even have a job working for a researcher in the biochemistry department as a result of my science fair project.”

“For a student like Jaime, she recognized that we have a program here at Memorial that she was interested in and her visit here helped her to make her choice to attend,” added Dr. Lucas. “But it is more than just the program, which can be similar to a lot of other Canadian universities, it is the other things that Memorial has to offer — the strong sense of community, the small university feel — these are what will convince a student from outside Newfoundland to come here.”

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