Three students in the Business Administration - Materials and Operations Management program of Conestoga College have earned national recognition for Region VIII, which includes all of Canada, of APICS, The Association for Operations Management.
Deborah Cripps of Guelph has won the $500 K.C. Holness Award, established in memory of Ken C. Holness of Vancouver, who was a leader in APICS professional development activities and programs in Canada.
The award, which has been won by Conestoga students for five consecutive years, is for an outstanding student who combines academic excellence with APICS student and parent chapter participation and community voluntarism. Cripps has won multiple program-related achievement awards at Conestoga. She has served in several executive capacities, including president, with Conestoga's APICS student chapter, which is the largest in the world. She also has participated in activities of the parent chapter, the Ontario Grand Valley chapter. She served a term as student representative on Conestoga's Board of Governors, and is active with the Guelph Food Bank as a volunteer, in addition to a history of voluntarism with groups such as Big Sisters and Scouts Canada.
The other honour bestowed by APICS Region VIII is the $250 Donald W. Fogarty Student Paper Competition. The winners are Bryan Cooper of Cambridge and Nathan Dorsch of Kitchener. The aim of the competition is to encourage the submission of original, timely and relevant research papers in the field of operations management of goods, services and processes found in business and industrial operations. Their winning paper dealt with a complete, integrated program to manage and measure shop-floor control in an industrial setting.
APICS, The Association for Operations Management, is an international professional association dedicated to the development and promotion of knowledge, training, certification and resources for professionals in operations management.
Business Administration - Materials and Operations Management is a three-year diploma program, which features an optional co-op education component. Students gain skills and knowledge for careers in the highly specialized and expanding fields of production and inventory control, purchasing, traffic management of goods and supplies, logistics and value analysis. The program emphasizes all five of the basic management functions: planning, organization, staffing, coordination and control.