Stephanie Doherty says most people are unaware UNBC offers engineering at its Cranbrook Hill campus.
She knew about it back in her high school days two years ago when she decided environmental engineering and the chance to attend university in her hometown perfectly fit her career ambitions. It appears she's made the right choice.
The 19-year-old second-year environmental engineering student is one of only 10 university students in Canada to be selected for the 3M Canada National Student Fellowships.
"I'm thrilled about it," said Doherty, a graduate of Westside Academy in Prince George.
"I've had that goal in mind [to become an engineer] for as long as I can remember. I knew I liked innovation and it's hard to figure out what career path that's going to look like but engineering seemed to be the way to go. So far it's been very challenging but so rewarding and I've loved every minute of it."
The 3M Canada award will result in a $5,000 cash payout and a trip to Cape Breton, N.S., in June to attend a student retreat, part of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education conference. During the four-day event, Doherty will join forces with the other nine students on an engineering project.
She earned the notice of faculty members who nominated her for the fellowship while she was working last summer as a research assistant, part of a feasibility study conducted by the Prince George Public Interest Research Group that looked at the expansion of UNBC's compost system. Doherty continued to show leadership in September when she participated in a waste audit of the UNBC student residences to collect more data for the summer project. To qualify for the award, Doherty was required to complete a 13-page essay, which she wrote during her exam week last semester.
Earlier in March in Ottawa, she and UNBC environmental engineering students Kris Nickerson, Kayden Peters and Kathleen Horita won gold in the junior design category at the Canadian Engineering Championships. The UNBC team had four hours to figure out a method and build a device to clear an artery blocked with tinfoil, using only rudimentary materials and a limited budget.
UNBC's environmental engineering program involves 4 1/2-year of study. The first two years of classes are at UNBC, heavily loaded with environmental science courses, while the third and fourth years are at UBC in Vancouver, where the engineering aspects are emphasized. The program ends with a one-semester work project based at UNBC.
The focus of the program is on water, air and soil pollution control and remediation, solid waste management, mine waste disposal, and geo-environmental engineering, which prepares graduates to tackle problems in resource-based industries like forestry, oil and gas, fisheries, mining, pulp and paper and agriculture.
"When we go [to UBC] we take about half civil engineering course and half chemical engineering courses, so at this point I've taken all the calculus and all the physics you can take at university and tons of chemistry," said Doherty.
"The purpose of the program is to create engineers who are environmentally aware, so a lot of our job will be to monitor construction sites to make sure environmental rules are followed."
As a Grade 11 student, Doherty posted the highest marks in the school district and qualified for a four-year scholarship. That tuition-free arrangement will continue as long as she maintains at least a 3.0 grade point average (on a scale of 4.33) while taking a heavy six-course workload each semester. Heading into the spring semester her GPA was 3.12.
"The engineering program at UNBC, since it's so small and so intense, everyone there is really tight and really close and it's its own little community up there and I wouldn't trade it for the world," said Doherty. "The program is pretty [unheralded]. Environmentally engineering is a new sect of engineering and people think it's a bit of cop-out, but it's the real deal."
