Making an impact on more than just dinosaurs

Co-op work terms fueled a passion for an Environmental Science graduand - By Sharon McFarlane Faculty of Science - It's fair to say that Sana Ahmad (BSc '22) was always planning on attending the University of Waterloo. Afterall, she practically grew up on campus as a child of two Waterloo alumni from the Faculty of Engineering and saw her older sister also graduate from Engineering in nanotechnology. The only hiccup was the subject matter Ahmad was to study. Although the Cambridge, Ontario native showed an inherent interest in STEM and engineering, Ahmad was really interested in rocks and had accumulated an impressive rock collection early on in life. "My Mom told me to pursue my passion, so I took a risk," she says. "I didn't have the opportunity to learn geology in high school so it was a whole new subject to learn from scratch." Ahmad found her first, and arguably favourite, co-op work term at Waterloo's Earth Sciences Museum. The Museum, founded in 1967, houses a dinosaur and Ice Age mammals exhibit, a simulated mining tunnel, hundreds of gem and rock samples from around the world, an interactive mastodon exhibit and a depth-to-scale fountain of the Great Lakes.