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Gibbons family’s generous gift creates new UBC endowment

‘It’s hard to express how much it allows me to do,’ says Whistler Secondary grad and Mary E. Gibbons Memorial Centennial Award recipient Abby Unruh
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Whistler’s Abby Unruh, a first-year engineering student at the University of British Columbia, is among the first recipients of the Mary E. Gibbons Memorial Centennial Award, a scholarship funded by a $500,000 gift from longtime Whistler locals Richard and Colleen Gibbons. Photo submitted

Despite the ongoing global pandemic, recent Whistler Secondary School grad Abby Unruh has been settling into her new life as a first-year engineering student at the University of British Columbia fairly well. 

“It’s nice actually. There are more people here than I thought there would be. One of the residences is open,” said Uruh, “and that has like 500 students at least, so it doesn’t feel quite as lonely as I thought it would.”

One major factor that’s been making the transition to post-secondary a little less stressful? Unruh won’t have to figure out how to pay for her tuition throughout the next four years, thanks in part to a generous gift from a local family.

Unruh is one of the first-ever recipients of the Mary E. Gibbons Memorial Centennial Award, a $10,000 scholarship that will provide Unruh, and other deserving students, with $5,000 per semester throughout the duration of her four-year undergraduate program.

The new Centennial Scholars award was established this year through a $500,000 donation to UBC from longtime Whistler locals Richard (Dick) and Colleen Gibbons, with those funds matched by the university. The endowment was created in honour of Dick’s late mother, Mary, who died in 1970 from cancer at 51.

The award “will assist outstanding students who may not otherwise be able to attend university,” according to a release from UBC.

Said Unruh, “It was really just a gift to be able to come to a place like this and go into a program like engineering, which I know is kind of high-intensity, and just not have to feel stress about another problem that could be lingering or looming.”

In order to be considered for the award, Unruh had to fill out an additional application that required an up-to-800-word description of circumstance, “so you’re basically just telling them about where you’re at and how your family’s doing financially and what it would mean if you were to receive an award like that,” Unruh explained. 

While the Mary E. Gibbons Memorial Centennial Award is open to any domestic student applying to attend UBC, the university explained that preference will be given to students from the Sea to Sky corridor, as well as to students from Nelson—where Mary was born—and from Burnaby where Dick and his brother, David, attended Burnaby South High School.

“It is the family’s hope that these awards will inspire students to come to UBC and thrive,” said Richard in the release. “My brother and I both graduated from UBC Law School and were on the varsity football team. We squeezed everything we could from our university education. It is now time for us to give back to the communities that helped to shape our lives.”

For Unruh, the award provides her with extra time and space to pursue goals she wants to accomplish both within her engineering program and as a member of the UBC student community. 

“Because I don’t have to work part-time, because I don’t have to worry about the financial aspect, I can join clubs and stuff like that, and fill up my time with other really productive things that are actually quite beneficial. I’m not having to worry about if I’ll be able to pay for the next semester,” she said.

“It’s just such a gift. It’s a blessing, really. It’s hard to express how much it allows me to do.”

Unruh said she’s also grateful for the connections she’s been able to make with her fellow Centennial Scholars as a result of receiving the award.

“I just want to be able to thank [the Gibbons family] and to express how encouraging it is for a student in the kind of situation that I’m in to be provided for and to know that there is somebody who cares about your plans and your future, and is watching and looking as you aspire to do something great, and become something great as a result of their donation. It’s so incredible that they would be so generous—it’s almost hard to comprehend.”

Unruh added, “I really want them to know that what they’re doing is a really, really great thing, especially for people who don’t always have the best financial situation. It’s really just enabling people to pursue their passion and find success in that passion, too, and that’s a rare thing.”