UPEI Co-op Students of the Year

The UPEI Co-operative Education Student of the Year awards in Business, Computer Science, and Physics were presented recently at a special event in Don and Marion McDougall Hall at UPEI.

Employers, students, and faculty gathered to recognize the winners and celebrate their accomplishments. The guest speaker was John Rowe, Director and President of the Timeless Group of Companies in Charlottetown. His presentation focused on the importance of having a good team to create success.

Award recipients are selected based on job performance, academic performance, academic/school involvement, accountability, responsibility, and their contributions to their employers during their co-operative education work terms.

Emma McPhail of Charlottetown received the award for Business. In the spring of 2009, she completed a work term with the Neilson Company in the UK where she excelled in creating market share reports and developing commentary on monthly changes in market share. She also maintained database dictionaries and completed weekly deadlines in populating Excel and PowerPoint reports. She spent her third work term in the Comptroller's Office at UPEI where she gained valuable training on the Drupal content management system and then trained other users in the department.

Jeremy Noonan of Kinkora received the award for Computer Science. Jeremy worked at SwiftRadius for his first and second work terms, where he helped to build up significant experience and infrastructure within the Amazon Web services cloud, and functioned at the level of an intermediate developer in a language he had no experience with previously. In May, Jeremy will be working again with SwiftRadius, and the company looks forward to him joining its staff following graduation.

Annie Laderoute of Stratford won the award for Physics. A fifth-year honours student, she was nominated by her employer, Dr. Bill Whelan, from the UPEI Department of Physics. As a research assistant in the Biomedical Optics Lab, Laderoute initiated a proof of principal study looking at the utility of opto-acoustic imaging as a tool for bone characterization. She planned a series of experiments and actively took part in scientific discussions. She also worked with a research collaborator for a month at the Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies in Erlangen, Germany.

For further information, contact the UPEI Co-operative Education Office at (902) 628-4395.