(From left): Alexandra Rachey, Marketing Coordinator; Tim Horn, Communications Coordinator; Angela Taylor, Graphic Designer; Vanessa Foster, Director, Marketing.

Made up entirely of Red River College grads, the marketing department at Sunova Credit Union proved a force to be reckoned with at this year’s Achievement in Marketing Excellence (AIME) Awards Gala, where they picked up a whopping 10 honours, including Best in Show.

The awards gala took place May 28 in Whistler, B.C., and was hosted by the Marketing Association for Credit Unions (MACU) to celebrate the best in credit union marketing from across Canada.

Sunova’s marketing team is comprised of four RRC grads: Marketing Director Vanessa Foster (Creative Communications, 2000), Marketing Coordinator Alexandra Rachey (CreComm, 2009), Graphic Designer Angela Taylor (Advanced Graphic Design, 2009) and Communications Coordinator Tim Horn (CreComm, 2012).

“Having an in-house marketing department has always given us the freedom to truly experiment and have fun with our brand,” says Foster. “I think that our success at MACU’s AIME Awards Gala further speaks to Sunova’s fantastic culture and the talent of our staff.”

This is the third year in a row that Sunova has taken home awards from the AIME event, which drew more than 170 entries in 16 different categories from credit unions Across Canada.

Click here to learn more about RRC’s Creative Communications program, and here to learn more about the Graphic Design program.

In this 2011 photo, Industrial Arts instructor Kris Hancock (centre) supervises Ecole Selkirk Junior High students Alyssa Fey (left) and Cheyanne Wise, as they sand their guitar bodies. (Photo courtesy the Winnipeg Free Press.)

Profile by Matthew TenBruggencate (Creative Communications, 2013)

Kris Hancock has a few axes to grind. Then he’ll get them signed by rock stars and auction them off for charity.

The Ecole Selkirk Junior High teacher and Red River College grad (Industrial Arts/Technology Teacher Education, 2007) is the creator of the B.O.S.S. Guitar Works program, an afterschool course where Grade 7 and 8 students design and build custom electric guitars. (The program’s title stands for Building On Student Success.)

The guitars are then painted and sent to celebrities – among them Gene Simmons, Roger Waters, William Shatner and Jann Arden – for signatures before being auctioned off to support the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and other Manitoba charities.

When Hancock and other teachers planned the first auction in 2009, the goal was to raise $1,000. For this year’s event on May 30, the target is a hundred times that.

“It’s turned into something that’s truly amazing,” Hancock says. “It started as a small idea and the next thing you know, we’ve had celebrities sign over 100 guitars.”

Hancock says he had the first inklings of the fundraising plan while he was still studying to be an industrial arts teacher at Red River College. As his instructors and classmates discussed projects that would capture the attention of future preteen students, his own enthusiasm for playing electric guitar came to mind.

“You have to find something that engages, something that’s fresh and new. If a project is boring or not interesting, they’ll turn off. Your class won’t be fun for them and it won’t be fun for you.”

While Hancock oversees the instruments’ construction, several other teachers lead the students through the fretwork and chord practice necessary to play the souvenir guitars they’ll walk away with at the end of the program. It’s a solid, playable reminder of an experience that goes beyond building guitars and snagging celebrity endorsements, as cool as those may be.

“Through this program, we’ve worked with over 30 different charities,” Hancock says. “We’ve taken students on tours of their operations, met some different celebrities, given students many opportunities to talk to media. These are skills they wouldn’t normally pick up in school.”

“One of our students had the opportunity to speak at the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce. Out of that, upper administration at PCL Construction asked to take that student on a tour and discussed the possibility of future employment with them.”

The confidence students get from taking ownership of a fundraising event that brings them in touch with internationally renowned artists is the ultimate payoff in Hancock’s mind. It’s a gift that’s drawing back past program participants to help with this year’s event, even those who are preparing to finally graduate high school.

This is the first year B.O.S.S. students will be finishing Grade 12 and Hancock will have a chance to see if the program draws a full circle: if the passion for woodworking he had as a young man translates into students finding their own passions and impacting the world with them.

And maybe striking a few power chords, too.

Click here for more information about RRC’s Industrial Arts/Technology Teacher Education program, and here for more on B.O.S.S. Guitar Works.

Front Row: Jennifer Kasprick, Janis Ollson, Maddie Tokar-Wolff
Back Row: Eva Brown (instructor), Anita Lesage, Sarah Brown, Sheldon Hamp

Students from Red River College’s Business/Technology Teacher Education program extended their reach clear across the globe last month, while taking part in an international conference on emerging classroom technologies.

The students, all pre-service teachers in Eva Brown’s second-year Teacher Ed. ICT and Multimedia classes, were participants in the 2013 Flat Classroom Conference, held March 8-10 at Yokohama International School in Japan.

Only Brown was actually present in Japan, invited to the conference as a presenter; the pre-service teachers participated via Google Hangout sessions and as online presenters during one of the conference’s three keynote addresses. Prior to the conference, all six students worked as a group to produce a video on the topic of “How We Can Help Others”. (Click here
to watch.)

Their project — showcasing humanitarian initiatives on a local, national and international scale — was presented alongside 14 others, and representatives from Brown’s class were given the opportunity to speak to the 200-plus students and educators in Japan as well as many other virtual participants.

“It was amazing to see the work they did here presented on the other side of the world … so that other people could see their work, and they could connect with other students and educators,” says Brown.

“Now when they go into the classroom (as teachers), they’ll have personal experience in how they can connect their students, so that collaborations like this one become real for them, too.”

Having completed the project and taken part in the conference, Brown’s students agree that emerging technology tools — such as wikis, blogs, social networking, and digital storytelling — have had a drastic impact on the educational landscape.

“It’s a pretty surreal experience … just the fact that we can connect with people on the other side of the world, and show them what we can bring to the table,” says pre-service teacher Anita Lesage.

“If you bring that to the classroom with your students, it gives them the same experience. It’s saying, ‘Look what you can do. This isn’t just going to be seen by your classmates, it’s going all the way around the world.’ And that might motivate them to do a better job, because it’s not just their friends anymore, it’s a grander audience.”

In addition to providing instant connections between teachers and students in all corners of the world, the new technology helps students put a human face on what they’re learning — in a way that textbooks and other traditional resources can’t.

“It opens (students’) eyes to their possibilities and their futures,” says pre-service teacher Janis Ollson.

“It makes the world a little smaller and gives our students more cultural awareness,” adds classmate Sheldon Hamp, “and an excellent memory of the learning experience to look back on.”

“Really, it opens students’ eyes to global opportunties and the future— and levels the playing field, in that respect. They realize that a student sitting beside them (in Manitoba) can be exactly the same as a student in Japan. They know they have that access, and they have that ability to collaborate. They can do projects with them, learn from them, share with them and teach them.”

Click here for more information on the Flat Classroom Project.

Profile by Matthew TenBruggencate, second-year Creative Communications.

Imagine leaving your home of 40 years – the house where you threw down your bags after long days at work, raised your children, held your loved ones and, years later, wept at their passing.

For seniors downsizing to apartments or assisted-living facilities, the act of leaving their home can be a traumatic experience. Fortunately there are people like Lauren Cooke (Business Administration, 2004), owner of Leapfrog Moving Specialists, to make the transition easier.

“When I’ve recreated their living space in a smaller room,” Cooke says, “The look on their face, the happiness at keeping their ‘home’ even though they moved, that’s very rewarding.”

Cooke and her staff of three take care of “the finer things” when helping someone move to a smaller home, consulting with clients and using their own experienced judgements to pack just the essentials while disposing of a life’s worth of flotsam. The job, Cooke says, requires her to balance the roles of mover and counsellor at the same time.

“You have to be understanding and compassionate while still doing your job of getting them moved. I don’t try, I don’t force it, it just kind of happens. I’m attentive and sensitive to what they’re going through.”

When she graduated Kelvin High School in ’98, Cooke wasn’t sure where to direct her self-confessed “Type A, driven, assertive” energy.

“I come from a long line of doctors and there was huge push to go in that direction,” she says. “I wasn’t feeling it. I needed a job interacting with the public… I knew I lead an active lifestyle and couldn’t sit behind a desk all day; I needed to get out and about.”

Cooke spent a year at each of Winnipeg’s universities, then took a year off before enrolling in Business Administration at Red River College. She says she fell in love with the program right away.

“It enabled me to get a full, well-rounded experience. I know there are straight-up programs that focus on specialties, like accounting, but in Business Admin. I picked up a lot of different skills in every area of running a business.”

With her diploma in hand, Cooke moved to Missouri with her husband, successfully marketing and client liaising for his building company. When her marriage ended in 2009, Cooke returned to Winnipeg, unsure once again where her life was headed.

Then she landed a job with a company that helped seniors transition from their homes to assisted-living centres due to health problems or a lifestyle shift. Cooke found an outlet for her physical energy, her passion for interacting with people, and her business acumen. After realizing the job was a perfect fit, Cooke decided to strike out on her own — using her newly-honed people and practical skills to establish Leapfrog in January 2012.

“It was scary starting my own business. I knew I would be successful with my network and my dedication, but I didn’t know when that success would set in.”

It’s paying off now, with Leapfrog doing about 150 to 200 moves a year. Cooke has made a distinct impression on care centre marketing directors, who often use rooms she’s set up if they don’t have a dedicated show suite. In turn, her clients have made a definite impression on her.

“I love working with the elderly; they can be a breath of fresh air compared to our generation, who can get pretty flakey. They’re full of experience, offering bits of wisdom. I used to ask them to write some advice for me on a special sheet, with thoughts of turning that into a book at some point. Maybe I’ll get back on that project someday.”

She’ll be hard pressed to find the time given her six-day work week and her hopes of expanding her business, with the possibility of franchising hanging on the horizon. She’s grateful for the broad education she gained at Red River College and says she eagerly recommends the program to young people searching for direction.

“Not knowing exactly what I wanted to do but having the personality traits I do, it’s an excellent choice,” Cooke says. “You can expand your studies after the fact if you’re drawn to a certain specialty, but lots of business professionals have done well with just the diploma.”

She should know; she’s got the business card to prove it.

Click here for more information about the Business Administration program at Red River College.

Congratulations to the above team of RRC Culinary Arts students, who took top honours in the 2013 Manitoba Mission: ImPULSEible competition.

Hosted by Pulse Canada at RRC’s Paterson GlobalFoods Institute, the event aims to develop innovative food products containing whole pulses (the edible seeds of plants in the legume family) or pulse ingredients. Students present their products at provincial competitions where judges evaluate them based on sensory and health attributes, the innovative use of pulses, feasibility and marketability.

RRC’s team — consisting of students Hayley Walker, Scott Ball and Ian Gerbrandt — won their provincial competition with a “Power Pulse Ice Cream Sandwich,” comprised of lentil cookie and chickpea ice cream. They now move forward to the national competition in Calgary in June.

Click here for more info on the Mission: ImPULSEible competition.

Good thing Continuing Education grad Andre Bisseck has found a way to parlay that passion into a career, as a Senior Business Analyst with the Province of Manitoba.

Bisseck, who graduated from the Business Analyst program in 2011, says RRC provided the structured theory and framework to complement his existing knowledge. He also credits his instructors with helping to prepare him for his current role.

RRC: Where were you born and raised?

André Bisseck: I was a North End kid, born and raised.

When did you first become interested in technology?

A good friend of mine got a computer for his birthday one year and I was hooked. I think I used it more than he did, but ultimately it was responsible for my near-obsession with computers and technology.

What prompted you to enrol at RRC? Why the Business Analyst program?

After doing similar work for a major corporation for a number of years, I realized that I had fragmented knowledge of business analysis, but lacked the structured theory that provides the necessary framework. Also, I was looking to make a job change and wanted to shore up my experience with recognized education. I researched the available schooling options and chose Red River College for its reputation and course content.

What did you remember most about your time at the College? Any experiences that stand out in your mind?

I remember rushing home from work to eat then trying to make it to class on time. (Hahaha.) Actually, I fondly remember  working on group activities with my teammates and getting to know others in the program. I also remember coming to realizations as to why some previous projects in my job hadn’t work out as hoped.

Were there instructors or assignments that helped prepare you for the work you do now?

What stands out most for me are the instructors. They really did make the experience complete, by not just lecturing, but offering their knowledge and experience to create a learning environment that was enlightening, challenging and entertaining.

What was your first job after graduating?

I was lucky enough to find the type of position I was looking for with the Government of Manitoba even before I graduated from the Business Analyst program at RRC.

What kind of work does your job entail? Do you feel you were well-prepared as a result of your RRC training?

My title now is Senior Business Consultant. The work I do now is very much in line with the course material from the Business Analyst program. I truly believe that it’s the combination of experience and the RRC training that led me to my current role.

Why did you decide to enrol through Continuing Education?

I was not in a position where leaving my job to go back to school was feasible. Continuing Education allowed me to maintain the job I was in, as well as provide the opportunity to further my education. I would recommend looking into this option for anyone who has thought about education, but full-time enrolment is not realistic.

Click here for more information on Continuing Education’s Business Analyst program.

Profile by Matthew TenBruggencate, second-year Creative Communications.

Tyler Nelson wants you to have less of an impact.

The St. James born-and-bred graduate of Red River College’s Environmental Protection Technology program (2012) is fired up about people lowering the amount of waste they produce, as well as the energy and resources they consume. Nelson says even as a child, protecting the environment was on his mind.

“From an early age, I’ve always been recycling, composting, lowering my carbon footprint. It was just the way I grew up.”

When most 18-year-old high school grads plan their college or university studies, they turn to parents, peers and guidance counselors for direction. Nelson, on the other hand, was a bit more ambitious. He checked in with the provincial government.

“I emailed my MLA and he went, ‘Oh, sure I can help you out with some stuff,’ and he set up a lunch meeting with Neil Cunningham (the director of Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship) and Dan McInnis (assistant deputy minister for Climate Change and Environmental Protection),” Nelson says. “I asked about the environmental field, said I was curious about it. From there, they let me know it was the next big thing, it was important, that my passion was overwhelming and they said, ‘Go for it.’”

Nelson enrolled in civil engineering at Red River College, branching into the environmental stream when he hit his second year.

“There was a kind of stigma around the environmental program, because environmentalists are seen as tree huggers and save-the-whales type people, but in the environmental protection stream, you got to see it from the other side, from the side of ‘How do you lessen your impact? How do you set up programs to help people understand and take action?’”

“It was such a positive experience. Everyone was so overwhelmingly nice and passionate about what they were doing; not just the instructors, but the students.”

That positive experience wasn’t confined to a lecture hall. In his third year of studies, Nelson’s applied research course had him tackling a real world problem: how to take Red River College’s Roblin Centre off the water grid.

“I was working with a peer on how to create a water collection system on the top of the Princess campus for the green roof… I was able to create an entire feasibility study on how this could work. I took a look not only at the sustainability aspects, but how the water systems work, the loads of the roof, basically everything an outside consultant would do, but I was still a student.”

“It gave me the entire perspective of what I could do with my life, instead of just reading what I could do in a book.”

College staff members took Nelson’s feasibility study and are looking for ways to overcome the weight problem — tons of water sitting on the roof weren’t in the Roblin Centre’s original specs — to turn his idea into reality.

“I was able to give them my passion and say, ‘This is everything I worked on, this is what I do,’ and they scooped it all up and said, ‘This is awesome!’ You don’t see that in a lot of cases.”

After graduation, a tiny job ad at the bottom of a youth sustainability newsletter connected Nelson with the Canadian Beverage Container Recycling Association (CBCRA), the non-profit group behind the Recycle Everywhere campaign. As a waste auditor, Nelson visits client businesses and organizations, reviewing their current green efforts and drawing them a personalized road map for reducing their waste.

“As someone of my age group and my freshness — my green-ness coming out of college — it’s kind of exciting to have someone say, ‘Yeah, okay, that’s a good idea.’”

Everyday, Nelson finds himself not only leaning on the discipline-based knowledge he picked up in Environmental Protection Technology, but the administrative and document formatting talents he picked up along the way. The union he’s found between practical skills training, real-world projects and the latest theories on good corporate citizenry makes it easy for him to recommend the diploma to anyone who wants to make saving the world their career.

“It’s a great starting point because you get to learn all about the policies, the environmental management systems, waste management systems. You kind of get an overview of the entire environmental sustainability-consulting world – and that’s the best footprint that you can have to start with.”

Click here for more information about RRC’s Environmental Technology program.

No surprise, then, that Continuing Education grad Angel Simard has already found her way back to Red River College — to further bolster her Youth Recreation Activity Worker credentials via a diploma from RRC’s Child and Youth Care program.

We caught up with Angel to find out what led her to RRC in the first place, and how her experience here has inspired her to embark on a career path where she can continue helping others.

RRC: Where were you born and raised?

I was born in Pine Falls, Manitoba, but raised in Winnipeg.

What was your favourite thing to do as a kid?

The number one interest of mine was always music. I’ve always had a passion for music, whether it’s singing, songwriting, or learning how to play a musical instrument. As a young child I used to sit down with my grandfather everyday to listen to him sing Hank Williams songs and play guitar, and I would observe him and help him record himself on a tape cassette recorder. He was a talented singer/musician who always wanted to be a country star. The farthest he came to that was singing a tribute to Hank Williams at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville during the 1940s. Music has been passed down from generation to generation in my family and I believe it’s meant to be a part of me and I’m supposed to use that gift and not waste it, and to share that gift when I feel ready to and also to keep passing that gift down to young people. (Which I have done with some of the youth I’ve worked with in my child and youth care practice.)

What prompted you to enroll at RRC? Were you always interested in working with youth?

A relative forwarded me an email about the Youth Recreation Activity Worker Program and I thought it would be perfect due to my previous experience working with children and youth. It was also a great opportunity to further my education, and to become a better trained professional. Because I had been out of school for some time, I felt bored with my life — like I was missing out on opportunities to work because I didn’t have credentials from a post secondary institution. I was ready to go back to school and when I got the call to confirm my acceptance, I felt like the happiest girl in the world and I’m so grateful to have taken that chance.

What do you remember most about your time at the College?

During my time in the Youth Recreation Activity Worker program (Sept. 2011 to June 2012), I built a lot of strong and long-lasting relationships with my fellow classmates. We were somewhat like a family and a great support system for one another. We would make the time and effort to organize outings, visits, and lunches with one another. Our graduation ceremony in June 2012 was the biggest highlight because I had the opportunity to give a public presentation in front of a lot of important people and to thank everybody who helped bring me here.

Were there instructors or assignments that helped prepare you for the work you’d do in the field?

The course that really helped me was the Activities Programming for Youth course. Originally it was meant to be a group assignment but I worked on it individually by creating a Multi-Cultural Scavenger Hunt that promotes cultural awareness. I was able to implement that activity with the youth I was working with at Norquay Boys And Girls Club during my practicum there. And I was able to lead my own activity called “Glam Time” on a monthly basis during my short time at Norquay.

You’re currently in the second year of RRC’s Child and Youth Care program. What brought you back?

My instructors from the Youth Recreation Activity Worker Program were my biggest influences and inspirations. Without their positivity, encouragement, support, and belief in me I may not have not pursued my education. I choose to be in the Child and Youth Care Program because I want to work towards a higher education to have a good life and future for myself. I also want to help children and youth who may have been abused in any shape or form in a therapeutic way to help them deal with any unresolved issues going on in their lives and work towards a happy and healthy development and future. I also want to be a positive role model for young people because I know a lot of youth do not have any role models in their lives and I want to be someone who is there to support, help, and teach them.

So what’s next for you?

I have big dreams and goals I want to accomplish, and my child and youth care skills will play a huge role in helping me get there. For example, I want to have a non-profit organization that provides music, sports and recreation, arts and cultural opportunities for children and youth. From learning how to write proposals, to creating a budget plan and developing a centre as a group, I’m already acquainted with some of the necessary skills I need in order to follow through with my plans!

Click here for more information on RRC’s Youth Recreation Activity Worker program, and here for more on the Child and Youth Care program.

Profile by Matthew TenBruggencate, second-year Creative Communications.

These grads aren’t just giving back to Red River College — they’re building it.

Chris Sousa (Building Construction Technician, 2012) and Glenn Garbett (Structural Technology, 1998) are two of the key pillars behind the Paterson GlobalFoods Institute, Red River College’s new Exchange District campus and residence, which is racing toward its official opening on February 21.

As site supervisor and project manager, respectively, Sousa and Garbett have been marshalls to the small army of tradespeople, engineers, architects and planners tasked with bringing a 100-year-old Winnipeg heritage building into the 21^st century.

“Ever since my teenage years, I really enjoyed this building,” Sousa says, sitting in the sunlit mixology class where bottles and glasses look out onto Old Market Square. “I fell in love with the building and had my own personal plans with what I wanted to do with it. I didn’t expect it to be a school.”

“To have Red River College have a great idea for the use of the old building — to add onto it without interfering with it, to not make it stand out like a sore thumb and to make the heritage a key feature — it was a great privilege to work on.”

“There have been definite project challenges that make PGI one of the most memorable buildings I’ve worked on,” Garbett says. “I’ve worked on other heritage buildings downtown, but it was nowhere near as complex.”

Those complexities started on day one for the two men when they met the former bank whose proud, smiling exterior hid confusing, twisted and occasionally malicious guts.

“Everywhere we turned it was like opening a can of worms,” Sousa says. “If walls weren’t collapsing, it was the ceiling. If the ceiling wasn’t collapsing, it was the floors. There was always something going on that kept you on your toes.”

Sousa says the crumbling concrete, floods and unlabeled infrastructure hiding behind walls has set him up to face any challenge. “It’s one of those projects that really prepares you for any future project. The way I see it, it was a man-maker; if you can go through this project and not learn something, you’re really in the wrong industry.”

PGI’s downtown location only added to the building’s unwieldy character.

“Confined sites like this where you’re in a small urban setting,” Garbett explains, “and trying to set up cranes, mobilize workers, trying to get your materials on site, on time, keeping them from being vandalized … You don’t know before you get into the building what challenges you’re going to face … As you get going, you get more comfortable, you think you’re going in the right direction. Then something will whack you on the back of the head and smarten you and you say, ‘Oh, no you’re not quite there yet.’”

As site supervisor, Sousa was in charge of the construction teams facing these challenges. That leadership role had its own challenges, however.

“At any given moment we had about 130 people on site. One of my main responsibilities is making sure everyone is safe so at the end of the day, everyone gets to go home in one piece. That was a huge issue, because the team was spread out over eleven floors.”

Garbett, who managed communication flowing from the architects, planners and college to the site (and back), agrees coordination was the daily Holy Grail. “Trying to keep everyone on the same page, get the information out, get it approved, get it pushed through the college because a lot of time there’s money involved — it is a very large, complex orchestra of things happening to keep everyone moving forward.”

The two men’s first experience of what music that orchestra would finally produce came on December 11, 2012, when RRC gave a special reception to stakeholders in the nearly completed space. Watching people move through rooms they’d painstakingly retrofitted, Sousa and Garbett were reminded why they ever took up a gauntlet like PGI.

“It was very nice to see the building become a living, breathing building and not to hear the hammering of tools … and the frustrations,” Sousa says. “When you overcome all that and you stand in this building and look back… then everybody starts getting the sense of pride, especially from the site personnel’s point of view, who most of the time don’t see the completion of a project.”

“You do walk around with your chest sticking out, saying, ‘That’s my building. That? That’s what I did.’”

“I don’t tend to get in the limelight,” Garbett says. “I was sitting up in one of the lounges and it was kind of cool because you could hear the glasses tinkling and the laughter. Chris had come up around the corner and I said, ‘Hey Chris, you hear that?’ He stopped for a second and I said, ‘People. This place is occupied, we’re almost there.”

Click here for information about RRC’s Building Construction Technician program, and here for more about the College’s Structural Engineering Technology program.

    

(Each year, a maximum of four Lieutenant-Governor’s medals are awarded to Red River College students who, in the opinion of a selection committee, combine to the greatest extent in their graduating year academic and technical achievement, involvement in College and/or community activities, and good character.)

KIMBERLY COWAN
Professional Baking & Patisserie

Kimberly Cowan credits Red River College’s Professional Baking & Patisserie program for allowing her to turn her life’s passion into a full-time career.

Cowan spent her childhood on her uncle’s grain and cattle farm in her hometown of Landis, SK. When her family made the move to Portage la Prairie, it meant a lot would change for a then-teenaged Cowan. Through those transitions, one thing remained the same: her passion for food (specifically baking), which she inherited from her mother and grandmother, both talented cooks.

A few years after earning her Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in History, Kimberly decided to leave her full-time job at a local bank to go back to school and pursue a career in baking.  During her time with RRC, she competed in the Canola Bake-off in 2011 — tying for first with her Sticky Toffee Pudding entry. She also represented RRC in the baking category at Skills Manitoba and the Skills Canada Nationals, where she placed gold in the provincial competition.

Kimberly also played for RRC’s first ever women’s soccer team, helping them place third in the Manitoba College Athletic Conference in 2012. She is now in her eleventh year with Winnipeg’s Soccer League.

Today, Kimberly works as a full-time chef at Chocolatier Constance Popp, a premium artisan chocolate shop specializing in treats made with local ingredients.  She thanks her family, friends and instructors for their constant support and encouragement.

PATRICK MURPHY
Hospitality and Tourism Management

A husband and father of two, Patrick Murphy left his full-time accounting job to follow his passion in hotel management. He enrolled in Red River College’s Hospitality and Tourism Management program, having previously worked in the industry back when he first got married.

When asked what inspires him about the field, Patrick credits the people. He enjoys meeting guests from all over the world and learning more about their individual stories. As a child, Patrick had his own opportunity to travel the globe — his father’s military career took his family to the United States, Germany and Newfoundland.

He hopes to one day give his family the opportunity to travel the world as he has. Goal destinations include Baden-Baden, Germany, where he grew up, and of course, Disney World.

During his time with RRC, Patrick was awarded the Professional Leadership Award (2012), Canad Inns Award (2011) for academics and Fairmont Award (2011) for academics and student involvement. Today he is the Fairmont’s Gold Supervisor, responsible for the care of some of the Fairmont’s most special guests. His career goal is to work up the ladder and become general manager of his own hotel.

Patrick also contributes to his community as a team leader for Scouts Canada, an organization he discovered while looking for something to do with his son, Devon. He credits the program for teaching youth about the importance of diversity and respect.