Engineering Student Makenna Coldwell Awarded the 2024 Student Affairs Participation Award
Each year students at the University of Manitoba balance their student engagements with their studies. Volunteering both on and off campus, members of the University of Manitoba student community are active and contribute to building a better environment for their peers. The Student Affairs Participation Award seeks to recognize students who manage to balance these voluntary commitments. Every year since 1992, the award has honoured a student who has maintained high academic achievement while demonstrating exceptional leadership qualities, making a significant voluntary contribution to the University and/or broader community. This year, we congratulate Biosystems Engineering student Makenna Coldwell who is the 2024 recipient of the Student Affairs Participation Award.
Coldwell is active within her faculty and within the Office of Sustainability. In engineering, her contributions are numerous. She served as the student representative on the Biosystems Department Council, the Engineering Undergraduate Academic Relations and Curriculum Committee and the Engineering Local Discipline Committee. As HR Manager for the UM Space Applications and Technology Society (UMSATS), she developed onboarding practices, conflict management resources and EDI information for technical societies, bridging the gap between her work in the faculty and practices in the broader STEM field. This work is in addition to her regular design contributions to the modelling of CubeSat with the rest of the UMSATS team, which recently won the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge.
Her commitment to working in the field of Engineering and STEM more broadly extends to her engagement with new and prospective students. As a student ambassador, leader in new student orientations for Engineering students, and a tutor for high school students, she helps prepare and train students interested in STEM and Engineering studies. Coldwell also participated in the École Polytechnique Commemoration Memorial ceremony on campus and spoke to the media on behalf of the University and its community after the service, representing the Price Faculty of Engineering.
In her work, Coldwell demonstrates leadership skills and hones these skills with her involvement in the University of Manitoba community. Jessie Klassen, sustainability projects coordinator with the Office of Sustainability and Coldwell’s nominator speaks to the wide scope of leadership Coldwell displays in her work: “whether as a leader in her Engineering community, as a mentor in her local community, or through her work experience to advance environmental and social sustainability at the University, Makenna is a passionate and impactful emerging leader.”
Serving as the leader of the student volunteers in the Office of Sustainability, Coldwell brought her experience towards the issue of sustainability, developing social media communications and recommendations to inform the next UM Sustainability Strategy, which she presented to the University’s Sustainability Committee.
While serving in all of these capacities, Coldwell has maintained her high GPA. Balancing education and volunteering isn’t an easy feat, and the Student Affairs Participation Award recognizes this. Through student engagement and participation in extracurricular activities on and off campus, the University of Manitoba community and the broader community can connect and learn from each other. Whether it’s through developing internal strategies within a given faculty, or applying principles of one’s studies to advocate for sustainability, it’s the work of leaders such as Coldwell that help strengthen our community.
Congratulations to Coldwell for her reception of 2024’s Student Affairs Participation Award!