By Lincoln DePradine
A tutorial scholarship has been established within the identify of an African-Canadian, who spent a lot of his grownup life as an educator and in selling African historical past and achievements.
Skilled accountant Eric Rudolph Wickham, who died final November, was a Centennial Faculty enterprise teacher, who additionally developed a groundbreaking normal schooling faculty course titled, “Historic Africa: Superb Legacies’’.
“Throughout his profession at Centennial Faculty, dad was capable of fulfill his ardour for educating about monetary administration and likewise African historical past,’’ stated daughter Aisha Wickham. “It’s our household’s nice honour to proceed to maintain dad’s identify and legacy alive.’’
The newly launched “Eric R. Wickham Memorial Scholarship’’ is tenable at Centennial Faculty, with the primary to be awarded in a pair months.
“There can be a pupil award ceremony in late March. The precise date remains to be to be decided,’’ Wickham advised The Caribbean Digital camera.
“However it is going to be over the last week of March which, sarcastically, is my dad’s birthday week. His birthday is March 26. So, the ceremony might very effectively be on his birthday, which might be fairly becoming.’’
Eric Wickham arrived in Canada in 1966 from Barbados, the place he was a major college trainer.
He taught at Centennial Faculty’s enterprise college from 1979 to 2004, and likewise constructed the curriculum for the “Historic Africa: Superb Legacies’’ course, which supplied anin-depth self-study of African kingdoms and Egyptian antiquity
Wickham’s deep group involvement, corresponding to participation within the Saturday-run academic and cultural program of the African Canadian Heritage Affiliation (ACHA), earned him the affectionate title of “Elder’’.
He died November 10 at Scarborough Centenary Hospital. He was 83.
Amongst Wickham’s surviving family members are his spouse Emily; daughter Aisha; son Olembe; 4 grandchildren; a brother Robert in Canada; and a sister Margaret in Barbados.
The Wickham household participated in drafting the scholarship standards that embrace the component of “reciprocity’’, defined Aisha Wickham, including that her father would have been “humbled’’ on the organising of the educational award.
“He would have been proud to know that the Wickham identify was hooked up to such an honour at an establishment that he was proud to be related to,’’ she stated. “I believe he would say it represents reciprocity, which was a theme that was so essential to him, the place everyone must discover a strategy to contribute and likewise obtain again. So, you set out positivity and positivity comes again.’’
The Eric R. Wickham Memorial Scholarship is valued at $2,500, and the successful candidate can be chosen by Centennial Faculty.
The school, on its web site https://www.centennialcollege.ca/financial-aid/scholarships/application-scholarships-and-awards/the-business-school-application-scholarships?, stated the annual scholarship can be offered to a “Black pupil enrolled fulltime in a program throughout the enterprise college. The scholar should exhibit monetary want and should be in good tutorial standing’’.
The necessities of scholarship candidates additionally embrace answering questions referring to their group involvement.
“Connection to the Black group is a core tenet of the scholarship. It is very important us that the recipient of the Eric R. Wickham Memorial Scholarship be somebody who contributes to the upliftment of the Black group,’’ stated Wickham.
In a single query, candidates are requested to offer “at the very least one concrete instance describing the way you participated in supporting the Black group and the way your involvement has made a distinction to the group,’’ she stated.
The applicant could select to reply that first query “and/or inform us how, by means of your profession selection, you intend to contribute to, and positively influence, the Again group’’, Wickham added.
The scholarship, she stated, is a “becoming approach for us to maintain dad’s identify alive, whereas concurrently giving again to a Black pupil that’s pursuing a profession alongside the same line to what he devoted his profession to, enterprise and monetary administration. He was very proud to work at Centennial Faculty and to pour into 1000’s of scholars over his 25-plus-year profession on the college’’.
Her father’s “ardour was for uplifting the Black group in so many issues that he did. So, with the ability to spend money on a Black pupil pursuing a enterprise profession aligns very well with issues that have been essential to him’’, Wickham stated.
