Posted on March 25: McMaster science co-op student receives national recognition

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Lindsay_Churchley_opt.jpg” caption=”Lindsay Churchley”]McMaster health physics student Lindsay Churchley has great insight into her future thanks to her co-operative placement that garnered her an impressive recognition from the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education (CAFCE).

Selected from among 74,000 post-secondary co-op students at 85 member institutions across Canada, the fourth-year student received one of four honorable mentions from the CAFCE Co-op Student of the Year Award (2003), based primarily on a job placement at Ontario Power Generation.

“One of the best things that co-op has done for me, is it has given me the chance to try a variety of fields so that I can figure out which direction I would like to go in after graduation,” says Churchley. “I now know I want to be a health physicist.”

Churchley's nomination included an impressive academic grade point record of 10.3, contribution to extra-curricular activities at school and in the community, volunteering with the McMaster Children's Hospital, participation in student governance, and involvement in the McMaster jazz choir and McMaster Ultimate Frisbee league.

“Lindsay is exceedingly deserving of this award because her terrific academic record has garnered numerous awards and scholarships, she is active in her community, her personal character is one of motivation and leadership, and, perhaps of most importance on this occasion, her stellar performance at recent co-op placements won her the high praise and respect of her peers and supervisors,” says Chris McLaughlin, co-ordinator of McMaster's Science Co-operative Education & Career Services.

McLaughlin nominated Churchley specifically for her four-month full-time work term at Ontario Power Generation's Darlington Nuclear Generating Station last summer. In her work term, she made significant contributions to two important projects to update safety protocols at the station, he explains.

As a radiation protection assistant, Churchley was project manager on the installation of a new radiation instrument tracking system and database, and established a new rubber area tracking database. These new systems resolved many serious lapses in inventory records and staff communication.

In Churchley's first work term last year she was a research assistant with McMaster's Medical Physics and Radiation Sciences Unit.

But it is because of her second co-op that Churchley now seeks work terms that allow her to further explore health physics. This summer, she will work for the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the McMaster site of Hamilton Health Sciences as a radiation safety assistant, and in September, she will travel to Brisbane, Australia for a four-month placement at the Centre for Medical, Health and Environmental Physics at the Queensland University of Technology.

Churchley will return to McMaster in January and hopes to graduate in the spring with a Bachelor of Science honors majoring in medical physics co-op.

She will be honored today (Thursday) for her honorable mention with a reception in General Science Building, Rm. 104 at 1:30 p.m.