Category: Student Spotlight

Early May is such a busy time on campus, but we managed to catch up with 2019 Quest Grad Class Speaker Mohamed (Momo) Caydarus Mohamed.

So…how nervous are you to speak in front of the entire graduating class?

I am nervous, like most people would be, but this is a great opportunity for me, Jordan (the other class speaker), and the whole graduating class to share some of our last moments at Quest with each other. That’s special!

What’s the first thing you plan to do after graduation?

I’ve always wanted to hike the Chief. It’s funny because I have been here for four years and I still haven’t tried hiking. Beyond that, I want to read more books throughout the summer as I work.

Any ideas for career plans yet? No pressure!

Five years ago, it never crossed my mind that I would be speaking at my graduation in a small liberal arts university in Canada. But that’s the beauty of life—the we-don’t-know part of it. My plan is to get more education and possibly pursue a Master’s in financial economics. But who knows, life is full of unexpected things!

That’s awesome! Tell us a Quest memory that stands out for you.

My favourite Quest memory involves walking into a breakout room with a group of unfamiliars (or slightly familiars) and trying to decide how to tackle a project. Through the awkward silences, the meaningful conversations, Google doc creations, and countless presentations, I think breakout activities would be one of my favourite memories of Quest.

What was your favourite thing about Squamish?

It has to be the biodiversity. Most Somalis back home would appreciate how green and beautiful this place is. And I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn and grow on this blessed land!

Nicole Zanesco ’19 shares some fond memories, talks to us about graduating and fills us in on what she plans to do post-Quest.

You’re just about to graduate. How exciting! Give us the post-grad details.

I’m heading back home to Calgary for the summer to work, rest and prepare for my move to London, UK. While I’m home, I hope to do some wildlife photography, sleep and read a novel…for fun!

What’s happening in London!?

I’ll be pursuing a Master’s of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. While I’m there, I hope to continue the research I started at Quest.

I’m excited to be at the centre of political science research, but even more excited to see the other Quest alums that are in London. There’s also amazing bird watching in the UK, which is a significant bonus!

Awesome! So, back to Quest… Were you involved in any initiatives on campus?

Throughout my time at Quest, I have been most involved in student and university governance. In my second year, I acted as Minister of External Affairs, and in my third year, I was President of the Students’ Representative Council. Now, in my fourth year, I am Quest’s first Student Liaison to the Board of Governors, sit on the Ombudsperson Committee, and I’m the news editor for The Mark, our student-run magazine.

I have also been involved in TEDx QuestU, Polaris, and Dancing Bear. However, most of my time is spent advocating for student initiatives and policy change. My greatest hope is that I‘ve changed the community for the better!

You’ve been busy! What will you miss most about Quest?

It’s going to be a shock going from living with five roommates to none! I am going to miss the close friendships, especially my roommates and our Lord of the Rings marathons. I’m going to miss my academic mentor, who has helped me through a lot, and the opportunities Quest provided to shape the community.

I will also miss how beautiful BC is and how much the people here care about the different pieces of our world. At the same time, by the end of my time at Quest, I feel ready to move forward and start a new chapter of life.

What’s one of your favourite Quest memories?

I have a lot of favourite memories, not all of which I can share in an interview!

It’s hard to choose between four Dancing Bears, 33 credits worth of classes, and tons of outdoor adventures. One of my favourite memories is when a few friends and I refurbished a generator, brought it into a forest by a body of water (I won’t say which one), and hosted a musical get together by the water. It was beautiful and one of the moments where I felt the strongest connection to Quest as a community. Once it was time to go home, we packed everything up without leaving a trace, stopped for pizza, and went back up to campus.

Quest students have this amazing ability to make something extraordinary out of nothing, as seen with most of the initiatives on campus, and that will stay with me long after graduation.

Did any Quest faculty in particular play an important role in your process?

Yes! I have one official mentor and two, I guess you could say, pseudo-mentors. André Lambelet is my official mentor. He guided me through all my ups and downs at Quest. I’ve learned so much from his classes and feel lucky that he’s taken the time to run multiple independent studies with me. The amount of care he put into my academic pursuits at Quest changed my life.

My pseudo-mentors are Jasmine Aimaq (now director of communications) and Colin Bates. They’ve both been influential over my time at Quest, through their classes, and the conversations we have. Some of the most important parts of Quest are the connections you make. It really elevates the experience and challenges you to be better.

Looking back, what advice would you offer your first-year self?

Don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot achieve your goal; whether it’s because of time, your own abilities, or the system. If young people believe that striving for change is futile, then all we are left with is complicity. Quest, being so new, offers many opportunities for you to learn how to build a community and shape it with the values you and your cohort hold, so don’t be afraid to pursue that change.

Jacob Tooke, Leaders in Elite Athletics and Performance program (LEAP) mountain biker, explains why he chose Quest and how the school helps him pursue top-level biking while earning his degree.

What’s your Question?

How do we train mental toughness? I’m exploring sports psychology and exercise physiology, examining where they cross over, and how we can use one to support the other.

That blends perfectly with your mountain biking! What made you choose Quest?

Actually, Quest was the only school I applied for! The academic structure is what hooked me, but what really solidified my choice was the LEAP program and the accessibility to the outdoors. It’s not often you find a university in the heart of a world-class trail network!

I was looking for something I couldn’t find at traditional institutions. As I pursued competitive skiing throughout high school, I was lucky to be in the high-performance program, which allowed me to take the majority of my classes online. Without knowing it, the structure was similar to Quest’s Block Plan as I was fully immersed in one class at a time.

That’s awesome, Jacob! And how did you hear about LEAP?

After attending a talk at my high school’s post-secondary info night, I was looking more into Quest and came across the LEAP scholarship on the Quest website. It was amazing! At the time, I didn’t know it was possible to get a scholarship for riding my bike, as you typically associate athletics with varsity team sports.

And how does being a LEAP member help with your studies?

It’s really allowed me to take opportunities that I would’ve had to otherwise make sacrifices for. The best example I can think of is my 2019 race season. Season begins in March, and LEAP has allowed me to take off two Blocks. My riding friends at different universities were forced to choose between taking off an entire semester or missing the first two races. I didn’t have to choose.

Overall, as someone balancing school and athletics, time management is something I think about daily. How can I make the most out of every day? On a larger scale, LEAP allows me to manage my education. I’m able to take the most classes I can throughout the year…all while still competing!

What’s your favorite thing about LEAP?

My favorite part about the program is the community of athletes and performers it is composed of. I find it inspiring to see the goals and achievements of the other LEAP students. I also think it’s awesome how many different sports and talents are represented.

What’s one piece of advice for athletes who are looking to attend university?

The best advice I can think of is finding a way to manage your time well. Not in the cliché student-athlete mantra of being busy all the time and referring to your life as ‘the grind,’ but in the way that you make every moment count. It goes by quick!

Oh, and if any mountain bikers look at this and are considering Quest, I will give you a tour of the trails after you tour the campus!

We catch up with Grace Hovem, Quest University Students’ Association (QUSA) Communications Officer. Grace is in charge of QUSA’s design projects, social media, managing their websites, forms and emails. On top of all that, she’s scheduled to graduate in Spring 2020. So…she’s busy!

For those unaware, QUSA used to be called Students’ Representative Council (SRC). Why the change?

We made the change to QUSA because we incorporated and became a “society” under the BC Societies Act. This means we are legally recognized as separate from Quest. Still, QUSA is very much tied to Quest—it’s in our name! We made the change for many reasons, one of them being for legitimacy. Quest was the only university in Canada without an incorporated student association!

Being legally separate is a good thing for both QUSA and for Quest. Incorporation means we can make agreements with the university that are legally binding, and in the future, QUSA can do things like get our own insurance, or even own our own building one day. Changing from the SRC to QUSA was a necessary and inevitable step, and we’re excited we made it happen this year!

That makes sense. QUSA seems very important to the Quest community.

QUSA is integrated into so much of the Quest student experience. A lot of our involvement comes from our role as a funding body. Every major student-run event on campus is made possible through student funding. If you go to the bouldering gym, or to the Arts Bay, or on an Adventure Club trip, your experience is made possible through QUSA. Aside from funding, we are an advocacy body for students. Board members (formerly called “ministers”) are sitting on various committees and working groups within the institution, seeking out student voices, and helping those voices be heard by those with the power to make change.

Tell us a bit about your position with QUSA.

I am the QUSA Communications Officer. It’s a staff position, meaning that I was not elected, and I don’t have voting power.

Anything exciting coming up QUSA-related that we should know about?

Always! Currently we are in the process of electing next year’s board, which is very exciting. Also, now that we are officially a society, we will be having our first-ever Annual General Meeting! It will be on April 18 at 4:15pm on the Third Floor of the Library Building. Everyone is encouraged to come, participate in democratic processes, and learn about what it means to be a part of QUSA!

Finally, what’s the best thing about Quest?

I love how passionate the people are! And that doesn’t mean everyone is passionate about the same thing, or even that everyone is all-in to academia, but everyone I’ve encountered at Quest really cares about something. That spark is really what makes our community.

Tala Schlossberg ’19 tells us about her big break with the New York Times and how Quest prepared her for the opportunity of a lifetime.

Congratulations! You are off to the NYT as a Fellow. How did that happen?

For the past year, I’ve been getting emails from my mom once a week with subjects like, “some job options,” or “worth a try?” with hyperlinks to jobs and internships. One day, I got an email from her that said, “NYT Fellowship—apply now!” and I opened it half-laughing. I read the description for what they were looking for—a creative visual communicator to work with their video and graphics departments as part of the 2019 Newsroom Fellowship— and something clicked.

I put together a rhyming, animated cover letter and sent in my application. I didn’t hear back for a month, and then one day I was sitting in the cafeteria and saw that I had an email from the New York Times wanting to set up an interview at my “earliest possible convenience.”

I think I screamed and cried and choked on my grilled cheese all at once and then stood up and told someone I didn’t even know. Two days later, I had an interview, and then I received a follow-up assignment, followed by a long and painful period of waiting—the kind where everything is an omen. Then one day the director of video called me up and told me I got the job! So, I did the only thing you can do when something like that happens— lay in the snow and sing!

What sort of work will you be doing there?

I’m going to be working under the video and graphics departments, producing informative visuals and longer-form animated content. I actually just freelanced a piece with them last month about the pitfalls of 23 and Me’s DNA testing. They told me that I’m going to act as a kind of “Swiss army knife” working between the different departments to produce content. It honestly sounds like what the liberal arts degree was designed for.

Super cool. You feel as though Quest has prepared you for this fellowship?

After my interview, I got a follow-up email asking me to find two articles on the NYT website and basically pitch a creative addition to a piece, answering a series of questions regarding timeline and enhanced reader connection. As soon as I got that prompt, I had the realization that everything I’d ever done at Quest had prepared me for that assignment. And this time, I had four days to complete it instead of just one.

Everything about this whole experience has made me so grateful for both the education Quest has given me and the confidence in my individuality Quest has instilled.

Tell us about your Keystone.

For my Keystone, I’m basically producing my own animated miniseries, like a TV show that never makes it to TV. It follows characters from a family through four different episodes that act as a social critique, touching on topics from diet culture to racial profiling, and capitalism to Ikea. It’s pretty silly and a bit crude. You can watch the first episode here.

What is your Question?

“How can we better communicate science?”

What are your career plans?

To be completely honest, I don’t know if I will ever have career “plans.” I’ll be working for the NYT in New York City for a full 12 months and I’m confident that the next piece will fall into place, whatever that may be.

My ultimate goal is to live a life filled with a wide variety of creative endeavours, and as long as that’s fulfilled, I think I’ll be happy. Being on Saturday Night Live (SNL) is a dream of mine, but something feels wrong in calling that a career plan.

What would you say to someone considering attending Quest?

Anywhere can give you a degree, but it’s a lot harder to give someone a passion. Pretty much all of my friends graduating with me are walking away with something they really, truly care about. That’s something that stays with you forever. I’ve been surrounded by the most incredible, brilliant, creative people during my time here and the community has helped me become a person I’m genuinely proud of!

Satori Clarke ’19 tells us about her beach cleanup initiatives and how she’s helping to get Quest students involved.

Why Quest?

I was returning to academia after a seven year hiatus. I always knew I would pursue postsecondary education, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to study. Once I heard about Quest and attended the preview day, I knew there was no other approach to learning that I wanted to take

What’s your Question?

What are the mechanisms and consequences of our conscious and unconscious mind?

What are your Keystone plans?

I’m writing a research proposal (which I intend to pursue for my masters) that aims to quantify (don’t ask me how quite yet) changes in implicit memory that is stored in the peripheral nervous system and central nervous system (spinal cord and brain).

Tell us about the Tofino beach cleanup.

I have been volunteering at Surfrider for a few years now. One of my fellow holistic nutritionists and good friend, Michelle Hall, has become active in the Pacific Rim chapter, as her home is Tofino. I was in Tofino last year a couple weekends before the October Block Break migration of Quest students, and participated in a beach cleanup. It was then that it dawned on me…how many Quest students enjoy Tofino and the surrounding area EVERY YEAR over Block Break (my guess is approximately 80-100), and how often do we talk about sustainability and environmentally conscious mindset at Quest? Wouldn’t it make sense to put the two together?

We ended up removing 600lbs of debris from 4km of remote beach. We were somewhat unprepared gear-wise for the hike in. But I was so inspired by the attitude and excitement all the Quest students. As a team of about 25 from Quest, in partnership with a local Surfrider Youth Club, we sorted everything, collected data on what was gathered, and hauled all that debris back up a steep, muddy trail. It will be brought back to Ocean Legacy in Vancouver to be dispersed to a variety of companies who use these materials to make new fabrics and containers.

*The data collected from this day will be added to a database used as supporting evidence to advocate for policy change, ecological education programs and new initiatives.

That’s great! Do you do any work on local beaches in Squamish?

I want to start a Surfrider chapter in Squamish; however the demands of academia have been my priority. I know there are beach cleanup initiatives in Squamish, which I would love to partner with more and get Quest involved in maintaining our ecosystem. It would be great to start collecting data on what we find here and to partner with Ocean Legacy for proper disposal/recycling/upcycling.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve found on the beach at a cleanup?

We find a fair amount of Japanese driftage because of the 2011 tsunami. The things that astound me the most are the hundreds of metres of rope that get lodged in driftwood stacks. And all the big Styrofoam—we spend hours sawing that into pieces.

One of the Quest students found a mint condition dry-bag with a hammock, a few items of clothing and full bag of walnuts and pecans.

How can one get involved in this initiative?

I am stoked to see how the QuestAdventure Club has backed this event!  They’re interested in putting it on as an annual thing .There will be AC meetings about the trip, so folks can either contact me or Sami Bierman, as well as watch their website and Quest community announcements for the next trip.

Independently, you can donate to Surfrider, look up the Pacific Rim website for events when you head to Uculet or Tofino (as well as the Victoria and Vancouver chapters). There are also opportunities to volunteer with Ocean Legacy for a few hours or a day to help with the cleaning and sorting process. But the most important way to get involved is to decrease single use plastics in our consumption habits wherever and however we can.

There may be internship and research opportunities with Surfrider Pacific Rim for students who are focusing on ecological and environmental studies while at Quest.

Longboarder Byron Essert (LEAP*) talks about totem poles and how Quest’s Block Plan helps him excel at his sport.

What’s your Question?

How can science and traditional knowledge influence each other?

Tell us about studying on the Block Plan, especially as a LEAP student.

The Block Plan allows for me to deeply explore the contents of one class at a time. Recreation Manager JF Plouffe and the LEAP program provide opportunities to give back to Mother Earth and keep my skateboarding skills sharp while still being a full-time student.

How is Quest helping you excel at your sport?

Quest is helping me excel at skateboarding by giving me the freedom to take Blocks off when I need to travel for events and competitions.

You recently did some work on a Totem Pole. How did you get involved and what did you get out of the project?

Simon, a First Nation member on Bowen Island, is heading a community-influenced totem pole project in which all 250-ish students from a Bowen Island elementary school contributed ideas of what should be depicted on the totem pole. Quest Tutor Mai Yasue informed some Quest students about the opportunity to come help carve the Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) log. Matt Peck, Christian Ahrenkiel, Graeme Lee Rowlands and I ventured to Bowen to help out. Simon let us help him rotate the log and strip the sapwood off using his arsenal of homemade wood-carving tools. Working under the guidance of Simon, the master carver, on such a long-lived log was an enriching, beautiful and humbling experience.

What would you tell someone who is thinking of attending Quest?

Understand what the Foundation program involves before you commit to coming here. Be ready to study many things that you might not be particularly excited about, but you will be surprised to discover what academic fields will attract your attention and maybe your passion.

* Our Leaders in Elite Athletics & Performance (LEAP) program provides high-level athletes and performers a chance to get an education while continuing to thrive in their sport or art. LEAP is open to a wide range of activities. LEAP students can take longer to graduate, are eligible for LEAP scholarships, and can use the flexibility of the Block Plan to spend time training, competing and touring while earning their degree.