Alumna receives Weston Award; 2009 Participant among finalists

Shad Valley is delighted to congratulate young alumna Eden Full, who attended Shad Valley Trent in 2008, as the recipient of the 2009 Weston Youth Innovation Award. Eden has received the national prize for her solar panel invention Dynamic Photovoltaics.
Eden’s project won top honours for its creativity and real-world problem solving abilities. Dynamic Photovoltaics is a passive solar tracker that moves panels towards the sun using inexpensive, environmentally-safe materials commonly found in developing countries and elsewhere. The device maximizes the efficiency of solar panels by having them track the sun during the course of the day, and can be easily maintained and repaired with simple instructions.

Also among the finalists for this award is upcoming Shad Valley 2009 participant Albert Hu, who founded the Northern Secondary Robotic Innovation Team, and will attend Shad this summer at Carleton University.

The Weston Youth Innovation Award was established to encourage and recognize young Canadian innovators and part of the W. Garfield Weston commitment to education. To compete for this prestigious award, students from across Canada aged 14 to18 outlined how they have shown initiative and leadership to be agents of change in addressing a current issue they are passionate about.

Eden will be awarded her $2,000 prize at an upcoming event at the Ontario Science Centre. In addition, she will work with an Ontario Science Centre multimedia team to create a short animation showcasing her project to be displayed in the Weston Family Innovation Centre. Details of her project will be posted at www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/innovationaward/.

Six alumni receive Wendy’s scholarships

Shad Valley is delighted to congratulate six young alumni who were awarded the Wendy’s Classic Achiever® Scholarship. The scholarship recognizes Canadian high school students in their graduating year who have not only worked hard, but have also given back to their communities.

Every year, eight regional winners are chosen to receive the $5,000 scholarship and 20 students are awarded a $1,000 scholarship. The following Shad Valley students are Wendy’s Classic Achievers:

$5,000
Eden Full
Shad Valley Trent 2008
John G. Diefenbaker High School Calgary, AB

$5,000
Natasha Somani
Shad Valley Queen’s 2008
Western Canada High School Calgary, AB

$1,000
Jonathan Chan
Shad Valley Waterloo 2008
Cawthra Park Secondary School Mississauga, ON

$1,000
Eric Coomes
Shad Valley Memorial 2007
Appleby College Oakville, ON

$1,000
Emily Ennett
Shad Valley UNB 2008
St. Michael Catholic Secondary School Stratford, ON

$1,000
Faried Garas
Shad Valley UNB 2008
Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute Kitchener, ON

To learn more about the Wendy’s Classic Achiever® Scholarship, please click here.

Shad Valley featured in Alberta engineering publication

Shad Valley featured in Alberta engineering publication

Please click here to read the recent article featuring Shad Valley in the PEGG, Alberta's engineering publication.

Young alumnae receive Ontario Citizen award

Congratulations to Shad Valley alumnae Vivian Leung, UBC 2008, and Emily Ennett, UNB 2008, who have been named Ontario Junior Citizens of the Year by the Ontario Community Newspapers Association! The award recognizes inspiring individuals who not only see a need, but rise to the challenge and contribute their time and energy to making improvements.

In Ontario, 12 students received the award for making a difference in both their hometowns and in communities around the globe. This year, there were 117 nominations across the province!

Vivian, a student at Abbey Park High School in Oakville, is ‘an amazing and accomplished young woman,’ says her principal, Odette Bartnicki. Vivian has organized several successful initiatives at her high school to raise funds for causes she is passionate about such as Pencils for Kids and the Sichuan earthquake relief. This year alone she has volunteered for the St. John Ambulance, the Rotary Club, the Oakville Youth Advisory Committee and for Big Brothers and Sisters of Halton, to name a few. Vivian’s story was recently featured in the Oakville Beaver.

Emily, who is completing her final year at St. Michael Catholic Secondary School in Stratford, is passionate about many school and community causes, including supporting a food drive that was going to end, an adult community that needed a wheelchair van, and a new group forming at school to befriend special needs kids. Emily's drive and commitment has greatly influenced her high school. This year, Emily introduced a youth philanthropy program in which all grade 10 students will now compete.

There will be an awards ceremony for the Ontario Junior Citizen award on May 3 at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

Shad Valley alumna honoured by the Public Policy Forum

The Public Policy Forum recently announced Shad Valley alumna Sara Ehrhardt, Waterloo 1996, as the recipient of their 2009 Young Leaders Award! The Young Leaders Award seeks to recognize an outstanding Canadian who shows leadership in civic discourse and public policy and who is at the beginning of their career.

Sara earned her Bachelor of Applied Sciences degree in Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is a recent graduate of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She chose to pursue a career within government as a way to effect positive change and currently works as an Economist at Finance Canada. “Sara Ehrhardt epitomizes someone who believes in the power of government to drive change,” said David Mitchell, CEO of the Public Policy Forum.

The PPF also announced recipients of their Annual Testimonial Award, including Research in Motion’s Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. The 22nd Annual Testimonial Dinner Awards will be held on April 2, 2009 in Toronto. To view the complete press release, please click here.
To learn more about the event, please visit the following website.

Shad Valley alumna featured in Chatelaine Magazine

Shad Valley alumna Elaine Chong, UBC 1994, is featured in the March 2009 edition of Chatelaine magazine for her extraordinary work with the B.C. Ministry of Health.

Elaine studied at UBC, earning both her Honours BSc and PhD at the university. In 2008 she was recognized as a Future Leader by the Women’s Executive Network of Canada at their annual Top 100 Women in Canada gala. Her story was also seen in the Globe and Mail last November.

Elaine is certainly a Shad Valley alumna to watch as she strives to empower women’s health care. This summer will mark her fifteenth anniversary since attending Shad Valley. Congratulations to Elaine on her continued success!

The following story features Shad Valley alumna, Elaine Chong, in Chatelaine’s March 2009 edition as one of five women who are ‘Making a Change’ in health care:

Elaine Chong
Pharmacist and acting director at the B.C. Ministry of Health Services, 32, Vancouver

As a girl in Trail, B.C. – a small town where, she jokes, half the 40 Asian residents were relatives – Elaine Chong acted as an interpreter in the doctor’s office for her Chinese grandmothers. Like some other recent immigrants, they’d never learned to speak or read English, so it fell to their young granddaughter to assist with their medical care. Today, the Vancouver pharmacist (the first in her family to earn a university degree) is on a mission to help other immigrants get the health care they deserve.

Why her work matters so much:
Immigrant women are much less likely to have family doctors

than Canadian Born women are

While finishing her post-doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia, Chong worked with the Asian Women’s Health Clinic. Staffed by multilingual female doctors, the clinic screens for breast and cervical cancers – Asian women in B.C. suffer from the latter at almost four times the rate of white women. This is often due to a reluctance to undergo intimate exams, and though Chong is encouraged by women who “take charge of their health care in their own language and culture,” she worries about those “who are lost to the system.”

Now an acting director for the B.C. Ministry of Health Services, Chong works with a team of pharmacists who advise doctors about the best drug treatments for their patients. But her goals reflect her roots: “I think it’s so important for women to be educated about their medications and conditions, and to be empowered in their own health.”

Article by Elaine O’Connor, Chatelaine March 2009, p. 160

Shad Valley & Government of Newfoundland and Labrador

Shad Valley was recently featured in a news release from the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador:

Municipal Affairs
December 17, 2008

The following statement was issued by the Honourable Dianne Whalen, Minister of Municipal Affairs. It was also read in the House of Assembly:

Congratulations to Shad Valley Students on Recent Award

This summer, the Department of Municipal Affairs was honoured to provide a four-week summer internship to five students with the Shad Valley program.

...

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate two of our students - Alex Abbott and Ankur Ralhan – on recently being named RBC / Shad Valley Entrepreneurial Cup winners. This award acknowledges the innovative spirit, youthful exuberance and leadership skills of Shad Valley students. The competition is a showcase for entrepreneurship, science, engineering and technology and demonstrates what teams of bright students can create with a little opportunity and a lot of passion.

Read the full press release at http://www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2008/ma/1217n05.htm.