Gold-medal tennis player, human rights activist wins UBCO honours – Kelowna News

The winner of this 12 months’s College of British Columbia Okanagan’s Governor Common Gold Medal is already a gold-medal-winning athlete.

Dr. Rob Shaw, who graduates this week together with his Physician of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Research, can also be a wheelchair tennis participant who received a gold medal on the 2019 Parapan American Video games in Peru. Shaw is the highest-ranked member of the Canadian wheelchair tennis staff and final summer season he competed within the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

Shaw can also be the highest-ranked graduate scholar at UBCO, an honour that has earned him the Governor Common’s gold medal.

“ previous winners I can’t assist however really feel humbled by this award,” he says. “5 years in the past, my supervisor and I dedicated to finishing a PhD that will make an impression past the silos of academia and lengthen into the neighborhood to profit individuals residing with spinal wire accidents. I’d prefer to assume that this award displays that we achieved that aim.”

Whereas incomes his doctoral diploma, his analysis centered on how peer mentorship can enhance the well being and well-being of people that have incurred a spinal wire harm. Whereas his supervising professor Dr. Kathleen Martin Ginis describes his analysis as exemplary, she notes he has additionally turn into an internationally revered scientist and a neighborhood chief.

Dr. Martin Ginis says Shaw “is a wonderful scientist who can produce quite a lot of nice analysis. However a superb scientific chief finds the potential in individuals and has the braveness to encourage and assist them. Rob has achieved excellence and acclaim as each a scientist and scientific chief.”

“By way of his analysis and management, and his excellent world citizenship, Rob is making the world a greater place.”

Shaw acquired his medal Friday morning.