As we all know, making ends meet, taking care of family needs, meeting work demands, attaining professional goals, can all be quite daunting. We hear talk about how we should maintain balance in our lives, but even fitting in some kind of social life to the equation is often quite impossible. For our students, such a wide range of hurdles often become major roadblocks for them to continue their education. Scholarship and Awards events hosted by our Centres of Learning are joyful occasions celebrating the efforts students make as they strive to overcome meet a wide range of challenges and build their future.
Recall that the Centres for Preparatory and Liberal Studies, Arts, Design and Information Technology, and Health Sciences are the centres most under-represented by scholarships. With that in mind, the first three Retirees’ Association Scholarships are being rotated around these three centres. As well, ‘
overcoming obstacles’
is the all compassing criteria for receiving the the GBCRA Scholarship. So, you may ask, how is this working out? Well, our first award, in 2017, went to a student in the Centre for Preparatory and Liberal Studies, and last year, the winner was student in the Centre for Arts, Design & Information. And, this year, 2019, the award will go to someone in the School of Health Sciences. After that, the scholarship will be open to students in all the centres.
This year’s winner is Ammena Ajaz, a single mother and student of the Information Systems Business Analysis Program, in the Centre of Arts, Design. This graduate program is designed to enable professionals hone their skills and become the key liaison between organizational business and information technology functions. Here is what Ammena has to say about her experience in the program:
"With over five years of professional experience in the Information Technology industry, I am responsible for helping businesses improve their IT support systems by reducing their vendor dependency and aligning to meet business goals and objectives. By using my strong problem-solving skills, I was able to build in-house proficiency and reduce the overall cost by 50% for my client. For this reason, I was given a departmental Champion Recognition Award for my hard work and achievements.
I am currently enrolled at GBC’s Information Systems Business Analysis program to further my skills and knowledge about software and system development. Apart from my professional and academic life, I am also a single mother to a young child. As you can imagine, I have a busy schedule between school, work, and parenthood duties. Thanks to the GBC Retiree Association Award, I can continue my education with less financial stress. I am very grateful to have received your generous gift."
