An elegant, well-appointment banquet room met the recipients and guests of St. Peter’s College Awards Day on Saturday, September 21. Award winners, families, donors, and dignitaries gathered to celebrate the academic accomplishments of the first-year and upper-year students. This year the College, through the generosity of its donors, handed out $79,913 in cash awards.

Like the students at the College, the awards were varied, some running long term while others were new introductions. New to the College this year was the Coleen Bowman CPA Scholarship awarded to a student heading into business, entrepreneurship, or accounting. The winner was Cody Stomp. 

Among the long-running awards were the Clem and Hedy Gerwing Scholarships, presented to deserving students from the area or those international students seeking Canadian citizenship. Clem and Hedy were among the first residents of the Lake Lenore area, and each year a member of the Gerwing family returns to hand out scholarships representing a full year tuition to five students. This year’s recipients were Rene Thibault, Tori-lynn Behiel, and Michelle Knutson of Humboldt; Taryn Verot from Pangman; and Korede Shitta-Bey from Airdrie, AB. 

Korede Shitta-Bey is one of the many students who found her way to St. Peter’s College because of a sibling who had attended. It’s a pattern for many students. Her brother, Pam Shitta-Bey discovered St. Peter’s College five years earlier when he was seeking entry to one of the country’s highly competitive engineering programs. 

The pair and their family originally comes from Nigeria and they settled near Calgary in Airdrie. Pam was determined to enter the engineering field, a highly competitive training program, so he applied to multiple programs throughout Canada.

Pam explains, “I applied to the University of Saskatchewan and was offered a place at St. Peter’s College. It was an opportunity I decided I was going to take. We looked it up and so did my buddies’ parents and we discovered it was a great place to start.”

As for his sister, Korede Shitta-Bey, who admits that she and her brother are close, said that Pam was an influencer in her decision.

“I just wanted to go to wherever it was he went. I didn’t really want to stay in Calgary because it was really competitive. So I applied through the U of S to St. Peter’s College. My brother always told me it was quiet and a good place for studying. He got really good grades to get into his choice of Engineering.”

The Shitta-Bey family were not the only award winners to discover the College from a distance. Kaden Herner hails from Dodsland, a small farming community near Kindersley. In his case, Herner was unsure of his post-secondary path until an encounter at a career fair opened up possibilities. 

Herner recalls, “About two years ago, I hadn’t heard of the place. I came to a career fair in Saskatoon, and they had a booth set up there. They told me all about it and it sounded like a pretty good deal, so here I am.” 

Herner received a pair of St. Peter’s College Scholars awards which will cover tuition for three of his classes per term which he says is a huge help in an era of rising tuitions.

From closer to his home comes Joel Schemenauer of Lake Lenore. As a local resident, Schemenauer has known about the College’s existence for many years, but he had a chance to acquaint himself with university life more deeply in his grade 12 year. Schemenauer was one of a dozen students annually to participate in the Accelerated Scholarship program. The experience cemented his decision to attend St. Peter’s College full-time. The Accelerated Scholarship allowed him to streamline his first-year courses.

“I took a course in macroeconomics which was an elective for my first year. It helped with what to expect in university; I knew how the classes went and how to be prepared. It helped me to transition from my high school career to my university career.”

Among the dignitaries on hand for the event was Germaine Dauk, chair of the Grounded in Faith fundraising committee. Dauk cheerfully announced that the debt incurred by the College for its 16 million dollar reconstruction of Michael Hall had been retired. He noted that there is still work for the fundraising committee to do as it embarks on a project to support improvements to the roof of the arena.