Scholarship Information
Ross and Barry Kneabone Award | |
|---|---|
| Maximum Amount: | $3,000 |
| Faculty: | Engineering |
| Application Form: | Application Form |
| Deadline: | 01-Oct |
| Occasion: | Fall |
| Scholarship Type: | Award |
| Description: | Granted to a full-time returning student in the Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering four-year program who is in financial need. Preference will be given to a student who identifies as a woman. |
| Background: | Barry Kneabone, Islander and resident of PEI and Florida, is a proud graduate of St. Dunstan?s High School and the University of Prince Edward Island. He graduated from UPEI with a Diploma in Engineering and went on to attend the Nova Scotia Technical College. He returned to UPEI and completed his BSc in 1972. Barry?s professional life was primarily focused on the world of communications, holding a myriad of positions in the industry in Atlantic Canada. His progression from Island Tel & Aliant to MT&T in many different areas provided opportunities to grow, particularly as computers became the fabric of business operations. In Barry's words: "Computer Services encompassed every imaginable networking possibility. From replacing a defective mouse to trouble shooting Cisco Routers, Unix systems, to Server interfaces with Telco switches and much more. It's important to realize through life's journey you cannot predict all the functions you may have to perform. Being a well-rounded problem solver and thinking outside the "Box", for an engineer, are the best options. Who would have guessed? Not me. My professional career is an example of just how fast progress has occurred over the years. There is no reason to think that this generation of engineers will not only see the same speed of progress but, I dare say, they will create progress. In December of 1995, the internet as we know it did not exist on PEI. At that time, you had to subscribe to a networking company like COMPUSERVE. This gave you access to businesses on its dial up platform. A company that I did a lot of business with on that platform was A1 Books. One day I got a strange call from a guy named Jeff Bezos. He had just bought A1 Books and he wanted my opinion concerning online purchasing. He wondered if this might catch on. I said yes because it was so very easy. He asked a bunch of other questions but added that he wanted to expand from books to other things. What did I think? I thought it would be great if he could supply computer parts and cards. He said he thought he would do more than that. I could not imagine what else he could offer. Fortunately, he had a better imagination than I. He changed the name of A1 Books to Amazon. He was the founder of Amazon (and subsequently the richest man in the world)." In the winter of 2024, Barry, and his son, Ross, who resides in Manhattan and is a VP at Microsoft, decided to establish an award to honour the education and experiences that Barry holds dear about his time at Saint Dunstan?s High School and the University of Prince Edward Island. |
