Student Awards Committee

Annual Report 2023-24

Submitted by Joan Zaretsky, Vice-President and Chair of the Student Awards Committee

The Student Awards Committee had another successful year in accordance with our policy while also exploring some new goals. We had three new Committee members: Judy Danchura, Kathy Bellemare and Marilyn Wiebe. These three members were very conscientious and worked diligently to discuss the application process and then review the 40 applications.

On August 29, 2022, the Committee met to review the Committee Operating Manual, updating any items which required changing to meet our new expectations. Our three major proposed changes include the promotion of the Awards using various social media platforms, the desire to develop of a more definitive rubric to be used in assessing the student applications and the expansion of the Award program to meet the needs of more students. We left the meeting with copies of the 40 applications to assess. On September 1, 2022, we returned with our assessments and using an EXCEL sheet to plot our scores, this year’s four winners were named.

Our four successful Award winners for 2021-22 were Kayla Babiuk (Winnipeg), Abbey Chubaty (Dominion City), Taigan Cunningham (Kelowna) and Kiera Lesyk (Winnipeg). In accordance with our Manual, we once again had a balance of Winnipeg winners and winners from other geographical locations including a Kelowna winner from outside of the province. The Student Award winners were announced in the Fall (November) edition of the KIT magazine with photos and short biographies.

In November, a meeting was held to start the development of a more specific rubric for assessing the Student Award applications to be implemented for the 2023-24 application process. We collected a number of different rubric styles and developed a tentative rubric which we will refine in our Student Award application review in September 2023.

Articles were developed for KIT and can be found on the RTAM website. We had some struggles with our website as a result of changing our provider, but the application forms are currently available for downloading by RTAM members for the 2023 Student Award applications.

We want to thank everyone who contributed donations to the Winnipeg Foundation over the years. While we awarded four $1000 Awards, the cost to RTAM was less than $500 as a result of our current Winnipeg Foundation Student Award Endowment Fund. We brainstormed new options designed to meet the needs of more students in the future such as adding an Award specifically designated for a student entering a Community College, for a student from outside our province and for a student entering a Post Graduate Program such as a Masters. Your dollars are put to good use when you donate to the Winnipeg Foundation and remember you receive a charitable donation receipt to claim for your income tax. Thanks for all your support!