Six students of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in December received scholarships from the Ian Ihnatowycz Family Fund. A Canadian of Ukrainian descent, Ihnatowycz, president and CEO of First Generation Capital Inc., is particularly interested in fostering leadership, which was one of the criteria of the scholarship awards. This year’s awards were presented online.
Sophia Opatska, UCU’s Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs and founding dean of the Lviv Business School of UCU, talked about Mr. Ihnatowycz. Himself a graduate of the Richard Ivey Business School, he supported that school’s research in business leadership during the crisis of 2008. “After meeting Ian Ihnatowycz six years ago,” explained Opatska, “we started discussing the idea of conducting similar research at UCU through the Lviv Business School, School of Management, and Institute of Leadership and Management.”
In connection with this research at UCU, Ihnatowycz has now for the third year supported scholarships recognizing the leadership skills of UCU students. “We award the work of active students who demonstrate and develop their leadership character in practice: they volunteer, create their own projects to support improvement, work with children, and, in general are agents of change,” said Opatska.
This year’s scholars study at the Artes Liberales program, Ethics-Politics-Economics, Social Work, and the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy. Scholarship winner Orest Tsebenko,, studying history in the Artes Liberales program, is pictured helping a project with needy children.
Nadia Kachmar, a student in the Ethics-Politics-Economics program said the scholarship was “a great victory” for her. “This again reminds me that I am now in the right place, at the right time, and, the main thing, with the ‘right’ people, without whom none of my little victories would have been possible.”
(The Ukrainian original of this article was prepared by Diana Motruk.)
