Congratulations to Rosa Wallace for her win of the inaugural Stantec Jim Bradley Scholarship! This scholarship is awarded to a student who excels both academically and in their future aspirations in civil and natural resources engineering.
Thank you from Rosa: It is a huge honour to have received the inaugural Stantec Jim Bradley Scholarship. This covered the full tuition costs of my final year, including my course fees and those associated with my final year research project. From a purely financial perspective, the scholarship has allowed me to fully concentrate on my studies and my future in my final year, without the distraction and worry of the mounting indebtedness of my study costs. But much more than that, it is humbling yet inspiring that Stantec has awarded me the scholarship named after someone so influential in championing the sustainability of the natural environment and its cultural perspectives while developing so many water based engineering projects in New Zealand.
Rosa Wallace is in her final year of a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in Civil Engineering and a Diploma in Global Humanitarian Engineering. She is “looking forward to joining an industry that combines technical, social, economic and regulatory factors and is excited by the challenges and innovative thinking that will be required, especially around climate change”.
Rosa has a particular interest in the interface between the natural and built environment especially within the water fields of engineering. She says, “I really enjoy studying fluid mechanics as I love that the things I am learning help explain mechanisms that I have been exposed to in every-day life. On my father’s farm, for example, I find it exciting now, being able to think about fluid behaviour in the various systems and understand more about hydrological processes in wetlands and waterways of different catchments there. It is like learning another language; opening one’s eyes to why and how things are the way they are”.
Rosa has been involved in various mentoring schemes throughout her time at university, and this year spent the first semester at Aarhus University in Denmark; “an opportunity to really develop my interest in water” she said.
“Studying engineering is great”, she says, as “it equips one to analyse and solve complex problems and to find new efficiencies to reform longstanding practices.” The desire to develop skills that can be used to “give back and help communities in need” is what pushed Rosa to study an additional Diploma in Global Humanitarian Engineering.
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