Young Alumni: Kyle Hill earning international acclaim
2010-08-31 10:15:38
By Melissa Lombard
Kyle Hill (’06) has been making headlines since he first arrived at Mount Allison. The recipient of a Bell Scholarship, one of the University’s most prestigious awards valued at $48,000 over four years, and Mount Allison’s 46th Rhodes Scholar recently completed his PhD in physics at the University of Oxford, specializing in medical imaging of the lungs. He was also the recipient of other distinguished awards, co-authored five academic journal articles, created Mount Allison’s Science Undergraduate Research Fair (SURF) in his first year, and was involved in a long list of on- and off-campus activities and volunteer organizations.
Just four years after graduating from Mount Allison, he has now been selected as one of the 17 fellows for the 2010-11 Action Canada Fellowship. The Fellowship is a leadership and public policy development program that selects up to 20 participants in the early stages of their careers who have the promise to be future Canadian leaders. The program includes six weekend conferences from May 2010 to April 2011, held in Vancouver, Montreal, Yellowknife, St. John’s, Toronto, and Ottawa. The fellows come from science, medicine, business, government, academia, and other professions.
The first conference was held at the end of May in Vancouver, where the fellows had a walking tour of the Olympic Village with CEO of the organizing committee John Furlong, a dinner and Q&A with organizers of the Olympics, an op-ed writing workshop with Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson, and a breakfast Q&A with Conservative MP Andrew Saxton.
“It was inspirational to be surrounded by the other Action Canada Fellows, all of whom are aspiring nation builders,” says Hill.
Hill’s team, or task force as he calls it, brainstormed potential projects to work on over the coming year, including the creation of an international network of Canadian expatriates, a new exchange scholarship scheme between Canada and Asia-Pacific, and an economic incentive scheme to stimulate rural Canadian communities. In the end the team settled on the first option — accessing the nearly three-million Canadians who live outside the country to establish a global pro-Canada network.
Alongside his Action Canada project, Hill has partnered with another Action Canada Fellow and current speechwriter for Michael Ignatieff, Adam Goldenberg, to create a Teach for Canada program. The project, which will be modeled on the highly successful Teach for America, will recruit top undergraduate students to teach for two years at high schools in need. Hill and Goldenberg are currently doing a feasibility study on Teach for Canada and hope to begin national recruiting in the next few years.
Hill has also received other exciting news. He has been awarded a Sauvé Scholarship, which brings together 14 young leaders from around the globe, including another Mount Allison graduate Jessica Simpson (’06), between September 2010 and April 2011 to live at Sauvé House in Montreal. The group will enjoy unlimited access to McGill’s academic programs and resources, while benefitting from the communal life and engagement with fellow scholars.
“The experience is intended to be a period of personal and professional growth and, in my case, it would allow me to focus on the expatriates abroad project and the new Teach for Canada program,” he says. “It will be a great transition year before pursuing post-PhD endeavours.”Hill, originally from Yarmouth, NS, has garnered many great life and academic experiences since leaving Mount Allison. He credits the University with kick starting his love for learning.
“One of the best qualities Mount Allison has to offer is what you learn outside of the classroom. I took advantage of an impressive schedule of public lectures, a summer reading group with discussion topics ranging from Plato to Keynes, and passionate late-night debates at 10 Park Street that, like a yoga class for the mind, stretched my opinions in countless ways,” says Hill.