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ARIC RANKIN
BScN ’05, CNP ’12
A
ric Rankin says that his passion is to provide health
care to those who need it most. After graduation, he
volunteered as a registered nurse providing HIV/AIDS
care at the Tsepong Place of Hope clinic in the Kingdom
of Lesotho. He was part of the first medical relief teams to
respond to the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Such experiences convinced Rankin that he wanted to
be a primary care provider. He returned to UWindsor as a
part-time student in its Primary Care Nurse Practitioner
program, graduating in 2012.
Rankin has worked in the emergency departments at
Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre
and McMaster Children’s Hospital, and as a community health nurse in fly-in northern
Ontario communities. He is a nursing ambassador for the Ontario Nursing Secretariat
and a part-time clinical instructor for the nursing school at the University of Western
Ontario. Diagnosed with Crohn’s as a teen, he is a volunteer counsellor for the Crohn’s
and Colitis Foundation of Canada,.
Rankin has won the Dr. Helen Mussallem Fellowship, the Lauren Packer
Memorial Award for Child and Family Centered Care and the International
Nurses Interest Group, RNAO Bursary. He is 2010 Alumni Association Odyssey
Award winner.
JEFF MAY
BA ’01
C
ommunication Studies graduate Jeff May is president
and CEO of the Boiling Point Wheelchair Track
lassic—a high-performance, international track meet for
athletes with disabilities.
Co-founded and incorporated by May, this non-
profit organization played host in its first year to the
International Paralympics Committee’s wheelchair
1500-metre Selection Trials for the IAAF World Athletic
Championships in Japan.
A para-athlete himself, May won 24 Ontario titles
and captured his first national title at the Canadian Track
& Field Championships. He has won numerous awards
including the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wallaceburg Sports Hall of
Fame, and the Male Athlete of the Year Award from the Ontario Amputee Les Autres
Sports Association.
He is president of the Windsor Bulldogs Disabled Sports Club–one of the longest
running clubs in Ontario.
A motivational speaker, he shares his personal story with his audiences, with the objective
of empowering them to embrace and appreciate their own and very unique abilities.
May was a 2009 recipient of the University of Windsor Alumni Association
Odyssey Award.
CHRISTINE DALY
BSc ’03, MSc ’07
C
hristine
Daly is
making her mark
in the oil sands
of Alberta by
turning what was
once a desolate
pond full of toxic
effluent back into
natural green
space and setting
the industry
standard for wetlands reclamation projects there.
“It wasn’t beautiful before, but it’s beautiful
now,” the environmental sciences graduate
says of the tailings pond in Fort McMurray,
Alta., she helped transform into a 220-hectare
watershed that includes a growing forest,
streams and a small wetland.
Daly is a research co-ordinator in Suncor’s
reclamation department. She was hired
immediately after graduation to guide the
design of diverse and functional wetlands
in the post-mined landscape.The Wapisiw
wetland was created on the historic, first-ever
reclaimed oil sands tailings pond—a project
her former academic supervisor, Dr. Jan
Ciborowski, says will be a “poster child for
reclamation activities in the area.” Suncor is
one of seven industry partners in a UWindsor-
led project that examined different strategies
for turning tailings ponds back into wetlands.
A self-described environmentalist, Daly
says the experience gave her fresh perspective
on the importance of working with industry
rather than against it in order to solve critical
issues that involve sustainability. “I thought it
might be a challenge, being an environmentalist
working for a large oil company, but I’ve been
pleasantly surprised by how supportive they’ve
been,” she says. “It felt really good to be a part
of this.”
Her reclamation team was awarded the
company’s highest honour, the President’s
Operational Excellence Award.
Daly is a 2011 Alumni Association
Odyssey Award recipient.
