Three Canadian students reflect on the importance of Stantec scholarships

The path to higher education is not always an easy one, and this year brought on challenges students and educators could not have seen coming. To ensure students have the best opportunity to focus on their studies, we are here to help ease the financial burden.

Scholarships open the door to higher education for talented students, which is why we are constantly motivated in providing monetary donations to organizations, colleges, and universities for students to achieve their educational goals.

For the past five years, we have been providing an annual award to a civil engineering student at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. This year, the recipient was Areg Adamian.

While growing up, Areg always enjoyed the idea of designing and building things—he gives credit to playing with Legos for kickstarting his passion for design. While in grade 10, he realized what he wanted out of a career when he researched the courses he was interested in—math and physics—and what he could do with these as a profession. This led him to the field of engineering.

Where does Areg envision his education taking him? Because engineering opens a broad area of career paths, Areg is keen on trying multiple routes to see which one fits him best. “There are many different types of roles in the industry including design, management, advisory, legal and financial—everyone has a different role to play in large-scale construction project and I would like to try many of them out,” says Areg. Currently, he works in project management, but he see himself exploring technical design work and eventually getting into an advisory role on major projects.

Knowing that his hard work is being acknowledged, Areg is thrilled to receive the Stantec Consulting Award this year. “Not only did it give me the motivation I needed to get through my undergrad, it also helped alleviate some school debt students inevitably incur,” says Areg. Like many students this year, Areg had to endure student life during COVID-19 times. He used lockdown as an opportunity to keep himself busy with schoolwork. “I know that my professors had to make quick decisions and react to the changing world very quickly,” says Areg, “Not being able to plan for something like this in advance was not easy for them, or myself at times, but overall I’d say that my learning experiences during this time didn’t hinder my ability to learn the course content.”

At Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia, we have the Stantec Urban Ecosystems Bursary as part of the Bachelor of Horticulture Science Urban Ecosystems Major—it’s the only undergraduate degree in North America dedicated to the study of urban ecosystems. We have also created the Stantec Environmental Bursary for students enrolled in the Environmental Protection Technology program. Recipient of the latter bursary, Emily Mark, is excited and ready to aspire to do great things within the environmental field once she graduates from Kwantlen.

Emily’s future looks bright as she aspires to start her own sustainable business to help the public make environmentally conscious purchasing decisions. “Receiving this bursary will significantly help with paying for my education for the upcoming semester, and lighten my student debt loan,” Emily says, “We need more people to improve our environment, and Stantec is making a positive impact on the environment by providing this amazing bursary.”

Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario are hosting their virtual School of Environment 2020 Student Awards Ceremony on December 4^th where the inaugural Stantec Geoscience Award will be announced. Justin Lockhart, who is pursuing a full-time graduate degree while at Trent, is this year’s recipient for our award. Once graduated, Justin plans to work within the natural resources and mining industries. As a fourth-year student, Justin has remained diligent throughout his studies no matter the obstacles that have come his way.

COVID-19 has had a major effect on us all, but we are glad to see that students are pushing through and keeping motivated in continuing their studies. We are proud to provide scholarships to help relieve some of the stresses these students are facing today.

To see where else we have scholarships, please click here.