High School Students Bring New Media to SFU Surrey for Project Management Competition

Have you ever wondered what high school students really think about post secondary education? Ten teams from five high schools in Surrey gathered this Saturday at the SFU Surrey campus to compete in the second annual Wideman Education Foundation (WEF) Project Management competition. The competition featured teams of high school students who produced short videos on why students like them should consider post secondary education. The event was jointly organized by the WEF, the Faculty of Business Administration and the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU.

A panel of judges featuring experienced project managers evaluated the student’s work. “The event was a great success, and we were delighted by the enthusiasm and level of professionalism demonstrated by the students,” noted Joan Vincent who headed up the panel of judges.  This year’s winners included Jane Wong, Sammy Tsai, Jansen Moon, Lillian Liu, Stephen Chung who are students at Surrey Connect, an online secondary school.  Each of the winning students took home a prize of $300. Other competing schools included Semiahmoo, Kwantlen Park, LA Matheson, Queen Elizabeth, and North Surrey.

The annual event was developed to support WEF’s mission to raise awareness of project management skills among high schools students. The competition was the result of cooperation between the WEF, headed by Max Wideman, and the SFU Surrey campus headed by Dr. Andrew Gemino, Associate Director of the Business Faculty at Surrey.  The student preparation for the event included three, half day workshops, coordinated by Jennifer Ashton from SFU Business and Andrew Drinkwater from SIAT, and culminated in a final day of presentation held at the SFU Surrey campus on April 25. “It was difficult at first to get the message out to students about this competition,” noted Jennifer Ashton, “but once we mentioned the videos, we had a lot of interest from the Surrey high schools. We hope that we will be able to maintain the positive momentum for next year.”

While the organizers saw the event as a great success for SFU and WEF, it was the students who took home the real prize. As Sammy Tsai, a student on the winning team noted, “it was a pleasure to participate in this competition; I learned more about project management and had a lot of fun completing the project with my teammates!”

To view the Surrey Connect team’s winning video please visit www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=174776505213&oid=53640204500.  Other videos from the competition can be found at www.youtube.com/WhyEducate.