Melissa Bailey
Melissa Bailey, the University of Manitoba’s 93rd Rhodes Scholar, has received another award: the Canadian Association of Co-operative Education (CAFCE) student of the year.
CAFCE chooses one Canadian university student each year to receive this award. Since 1994 this award has recognized a wide variety of achievements — job performance, academic performance and responsibility, and particular contributions to their co-op employer, to co-operative education, and the community.
A co-operative education program is one that alternates periods of academic study with periods of work experience in appropriate fields of business, industry, government, or academic research. Bailey, a genetics honour student, is a co-op student in the Faculty of Science. With over 100 co-op placements annually, the Science Co-op Program is celebrating 10 years of excellence in co-op.
In the summer of 2010, Bailey worked in the laboratory of Mark Fry, a University of Manitoba biological scientist. She isolated mouse neurons, helping Fry’s research team investigate the neurobiology of obesity.
Prior to this she worked in a federal laboratory doing work on prion disease; she was also one of 10 international students chosen for a summer studentship at the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology in Freiburg, Germany.
“My experience in the Co-op Program has been very positive,” Bailey says. “Co-op has helped me realize the full potential of my science undergraduate degree, and I have learned not just the skills I need to succeed, but how to apply these skills.”
For more information contact Sean Moore, public affairs, University of Manitoba, 204-474-7963 ([email protected]).
