25 January 2007

Scholarship winner hopes to influence
Asian-Pacific studies in B.C.

The winner of the latest TNG Canada/CWA $1,000 scholarship is as certain about how he's going to spend the windfall as he is about how he's going to change schooling in his home province.

Paul Matheson

Paul Matheson, a fourth-year student (political science and history double major) graduating in four months with a BA from the University of British Columbia, says the scholarship money will significantly offset the costs of textbooks and tuition this year. "Textbooks for history majors in upper levels are often quite specialized and therefore costly. The ... scholarship ensures that I won't have to worry about working at the local gas station too much, and will allow me to focus on my reading and writing."

The son of Dennis and Rosanne Matheson, both of whom are members of the Canadian Media Guild and work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Vancouver (he as director of Canada Now, and she in the sales department) says he plans to take a Bachelor of Education program next year "with the goal of becoming a high school social studies teacher."

Not only that, but "I ... hope to eventually affect school board policy to emphasize the study of the Asian Pacific and immigrant issues in British Columbia classrooms."

Paul says that he has focused his studies on the Asian-Pacific region and its political history. "I think that relations between North America and Southeast Asia will become an increasingly dominant force in our lives. As a West-Coast Canadian, issues of Pacific Rim nations are becoming almost local to me.

"Issues of immigrant education have inspired me to volunteer as a teaching assistant at a Vancouver East Side high school one morning a week, in the lowest earning postal code in Canada."

Paul says he is "very grateful" to TNG Canada for providing money to post-secondary students. "University tuition seems to go up every year and it is hard for students to (obtain) an undergraduate degree without also finding themselves in a serious amount of debt."