Rita Elraheb's experience earns her a prestigious scholarship to a top-ranked Canadian university

At Christie, we welcome co-op students from Canadian colleges and universities including McMaster, University of Waterloo, Conestoga College, and Wilfrid Laurier University. We also periodically work with high schools to host grade 12 students for shorter terms of three weeks. 

Last year, high school student Rita Elraheb joined us in our engineering services department at our center of excellence for engineering in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. As an accomplished student, Rita was already thinking well ahead about what area of study she might follow in university: “I decided to do my co-op at Christie to help me determine if engineering was a field I wanted to pursue,” says Rita.  

As a co-op student at Christie, Rita jumped into a project that focused on improving the sustainable design and manufacture of Christie technology, which culminated in a presentation to a wider team at Christie. “It was the most I’ve ever presented!” says Rita. “It was a great experience to present in the workplace.” 

Lighting the spark 

Rita gained experience not only in formally presenting research findings in a workplace setting but also insight into corporate sustainability and the environment. She applied this new knowledge to a scholarship essay submission for Wilfrid Laurier University.  

“The essay prompt was to pick one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and one of them was about sustainability and being environmentally friendly. I thought that was perfectly aligned with what I did at Christie,” explains Rita. In her essay, Rita focused on her research into industry-wide efforts toward sustainability and the steps Christie can take to improve the sustainability of our products.  

We use the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals as the benchmark for our ESG goals, and since 2004, Christie and Ushio [our parent company] have worked proactively on a long-term sustainability plan. 

We implemented this plan in phases and surpassed our 2020 Environmental Action Plan (EAP) to become a global low-carbon, recycling-orientated, and biodiversity-preserving company. Our next phase is to develop an enhanced, broader eco-rating system aligned with industry standards to achieve our goals towards 2030. These include reducing our carbon footprint by 50%, continuous year-over-year reductions in our overall resource consumption, and continuing to achieve superior efficiency over our competitors.  

She won! 

Rita submitted her application and essay in April and found out she was one of seven recipients of the Laurier Scholars Award in mid-June.  

Only one person from each faculty wins the scholarship—valued at CAD$40,000—and along with money, Rita is assigned a professor and an upper-year student to mentor her during her first year at university. She also has the opportunity to participate in an international exchange program or work at a hospital or medical institution around the world. 

And her focus at school? Science! After completing her four-year undergraduate degree, Rita hopes to enter medical school. 

We see a very brightly illuminated future ahead for Rita and are proud to have played a small part in what will surely be a very successful academic career.