$60,000 scholarship has Strathmore teen breathing a sigh of relief
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
For some going to college or university can bring with it the fear of how bills will get paid, groceries bought and homework done. Though homework isn’t off the list, Strathmore teen Jonah Zankl can gladly check off the fears of affording university after he was awarded a $60,000 Schulich Leader Scholarship for the University of Calgary.
“It’s such a pressure relieved, I think that’s the biggest thing is it opens so many opportunities to keep giving back in the community,” said Zankl.
“The best quote I heard through the year was (from) a fifth year engineering student, he was speaking at a dinner I got invited to and he said, don’t think of it as free money, think of it as your paycheque for the year so you can volunteer instead of working.”
There are 20 universities in Canada that participate in the Schulich scholarship program, and five in Israel. Every student selected must keep their grades up, and continue to show the ongoing leadership and community involvement that helped them be selected in the first place.
“We had about 75 nominees this year and then from that we have a committee that looks at each and every submission,” said Susan Barker Vice-Provost of Students University of Calgary
“We have criteria from the Schulich Foundation, we look at academic excellence, community involvement and entrepreneurship. Then from the nominees that we have we decide on two students that we make offers to as a result of the process.”
Each high school in Canada is allowed to nominate one student for the scholarship said Barker. The first round of selection is by the high school; at that stage the student must say which university they wish to be considered for. The nominees have to be choosing within a STEM program in order to qualify for the scholarship. STEM programs are science, technology, engineering or math.
“It’s pretty prestigious even to get nominated from your high school,” said Barker.
Zankl relived the day he got the call that he had been selected as a recipient of the scholarship.
“I got a call from the registrar at the University… and he was like ‘well what are your plans for school’, and I was like ‘well I am coming here now aren’t I?’” said Zankl.
“This one was definitely crazy because I had gone home sick that afternoon and I was lying on the couch and just got that phone call and he was like, you need to sit down and at that moment I kind of knew that that was what it was going to be about.
“I had seen on Facebook that they were announcing their selection that day, so it was unbelievable, I could hardly talk and didn’t even know what to say to him on the phone, it was just unbelievable.”
Zankl plans to work on completing a combined degree in economics and applied math. At this point he is not sure where he plans to take his career, but he does have five years to figure it out.
“I get $15,000 a year and basically whatever is beyond tuition is mine to use for books and school supplies and to put away a little bit more for my last year,” said Zankl.
Montreal billionaire Seymour Schulich, who credits a scholarship with helping him complete his own MBA at McGill University, created the Schulich scholarship. He has been quoted as saying he is trying to create a scholarship in Canada similar to the Rhodes scholarship. In 2011 he announced a gift of $100 million to create the Schulich Leaders Scholarships. This year there were 40 students across the country selected to be 2013 recipients of the award.