Former resident receives prestigioscholarship at Southern College of Optometry in Memphis Wells presents at NFU convention
Madison Mortensen of Swift Current – a first-year student at Southern College of Optometry in Memphis – was recently honored with the Presidential Endowed Scholarship award.
The award recognizes an optometry student who had a competitive undergraduate grade point average and Optometry Admission Test score, as well as demonstrated leadership and service.
It comes with an annual scholarship of $25,000 over the course of the four-year doctorate program.
Mortensen is a graduate of the University of Victoria and Swift Current Comprehensive High School.
Each year, Southern College of Optometry recognizes its most outstanding first-year students with scholarships to help defray the costs of their education in pursuit of their Doctor of Optometry degrees.
For the 2023-24 academic school year, the college awarded first-year scholarships to 94 students, representing 90.3% of the entering class.
The scholarship total awarded to first-year students this year surpassed $960,000, the highest in the school’s 91-year history.
Southern College of Optometry was established in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1932. SCO is an independent, not-for-profit institution of higher education with more than 500 students and residents from 40 states.
The Eye Center at SCO serves nearly 60,000 patients annually, helping make the college one of the top in the nation for clinical optometric education.
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The NFU National Convention featured a panel presentation on Organizing for Change. Panelists included Stewart Wells, Swift Current area farmer and NFU Vice-president of Operation. He focused on how the NFU has organized to be effective in agricultural policy.
Wells gave NFU delegates and other Convention-goers a brief history of the many successes of the Canadian farm movement and of the NFU. That history included the creation of grain marketing cooperatives such as the Prairie Wheat Pools. He noted over the life of those elevator co-operatives, they put an additional half-billion dollars into farmers’ hands. He continued, pointing to the creation and multi-decade defence of the Canadian Wheat Board; Supply Management systems for eggs, poultry, and dairy; the key role the NFU played in stopping the introduction of the genetically modified (GM) dairy hormone RBGH; and the NFU’S lead role in successfully stopping the introduction of GM wheat. He concluded the brief history by focusing on the multi-decade struggle to counter corporate-friendly trade agreements, including the WTO.
Wells said the NFU is a trailblazer and in Canadian agricultural policy, “changed the conversation” and succeeded in changing policies, to farmers’ benefit.