Fourth-year Camosun Sport and Fitness Leadership student Tanya Fogarty and fourth-year Business Administration student Dylan Kaplan have won The Association for Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning BC/Yukon award. The award recognizes BC or Yukon students who demonstrate an outstanding level of achievement in co-op education or work-integrated learning. Fogarty won in the Work-Integrated Learning category, while Kaplan took home the Co-op category.
As part of her work integration, Fogarty began an exercise class for people with chronic disease at the YMCA-YWCA of Vancouver Island, as well as a class for teenagers with depression and anxiety, a decision that Fogarty says stems from her own experience with the latter.
“I think everyone kind of goes through a little bit of something in high school as they’re finishing up,” says Fogarty. “As someone who’s a bit younger in my degree, I thought that it was really important [to give] any outreach that I could.”
Fogarty’s class focused on the individual, she says, from the point of view of what worked for them. It’s different for everyone, but one thing she tried to steer clear of was the brain-chemistry aspect of depression and anxiety, because the class took place after her students had just spent a full hour with the psychologist clinician, she says, and they were often already overwhelmed. By the time students got to her class “they were hammered with stuff in their brain.”
“Let’s just move and see how we feel. Let that be an escape,” she says. “Whatever you have on your mind, breathe it out, let it go.”
For the class that focused on treating chronic diseases, such as heart failure, cancer, and diabetes, Fogarty says one of her main messages was communicating that it’s still possible to have exercise be beneficial, even if you’re dealing with the late stages of a disease.
“I think that’s what made our program really special and welcoming to people,” she says. “We had one lady and she was in… heart failure; they were preparing her family because they thought she was not going to make it. For her, this program was everything.”
Kaplan, who is majoring in human resources and leadership management, started his work experience as support coordinator for the engagement and communications group at Victoria-based charity Innovativecommunities.org Foundation. He says that being recognized on this level comes down to believing that his efforts were worthwhile.
“A lot of the time you can see something like that and think, ‘Alright, sure, that doesn’t seem too hard, but what are the odds?’ It really taught me that I need to put myself out there,” says Kaplan. “Because, well, this wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t go out and apply for that first award.” (In February, Kaplan won the 2020 Yvonne Thompson Page Co-op/Internship Student of the Year Award; read our story on that here.)
Kaplan says the most recent award puts him in a good place for future business and educational endeavours.
“I would hope it communicates what I’m able to achieve,” he says, “and I think that could be meaningful going forward, moving forward into my career or applying for new programs.”
Both Kaplan and Fogarty are thinking about persuing a master’s degree in the future. Fogarty would like a master’s in physiotherapy, while Kaplan says the focus would be on human resources.